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2008 Senate · NJ

Fairleigh Dickinson University · fieldwork ended 2008-10-26 (9 days before the election) · 852 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 52% · Republican 32%

D+20.0

The certified result

Democrat 56.03% · Republican 41.95%

D+14.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 52 − 32 = 20.00
  2. Actual margin = 56.030 − 41.954 = 14.076
  3. Signed miss = 20.00 − (14.076) = 5.924
  4. Absolute miss = |5.924| = 5.924

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16550, race ID 1567 (538 database).