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2008 Senate · OR

DHM Research · fieldwork ended 2008-10-24 (11 days before the election) · 500 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 40%

D+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 48.91% · Republican 45.55%

D+3.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 40 = 5.00
  2. Actual margin = 48.905 − 45.553 = 3.352
  3. Signed miss = 5.00 − (3.352) = 1.649
  4. Absolute miss = |1.649| = 1.649

The poll overstated the Democrat by 1.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16684, race ID 1571 (538 database).