Skip to content

2008 Senate · TX

Scott Rasmussen (Rasmussen Reports) · fieldwork ended 2008-10-21 (14 days before the election) · 500 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 40% · Republican 55%

R+15.0

The certified result

Democrat 42.84% · Republican 54.82%

R+12.0

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 40 − 55 = -15.00
  2. Actual margin = 42.838 − 54.821 = -11.983
  3. Signed miss = -15.00 − (-11.983) = -3.017
  4. Absolute miss = |-3.017| = 3.017

The poll overstated the Republican by 3.0 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16757, race ID 1576 (538 database).