Skip to content

2008 President · NC

FTI Consulting · fieldwork ended 2008-10-25 (10 days before the election) · 402 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 43%

D+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 49.70% · Republican 49.38%

D+0.3

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 43 = 4.00
  2. Actual margin = 49.704 − 49.376 = 0.328
  3. Signed miss = 4.00 − (0.328) = 3.671
  4. Absolute miss = |3.671| = 3.671

The poll overstated the Democrat by 3.7 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16610, race ID 731 (538 database).