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2008 President · TX

YouGov · fieldwork ended 2008-10-19 (16 days before the election) · 550 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 40% · Republican 51%

R+11.0

The certified result

Democrat 43.68% · Republican 55.45%

R+11.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 40 − 51 = -11.00
  2. Actual margin = 43.683 − 55.452 = -11.769
  3. Signed miss = -11.00 − (-11.769) = 0.769
  4. Absolute miss = |0.769| = 0.769

The poll overstated the Democrat by 0.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16743, race ID 747 (538 database).