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2008 President · OH

Zogby Analytics · fieldwork ended 2008-10-19 (16 days before the election) · 991 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 49%

R+2.0

The certified result

Democrat 51.50% · Republican 46.91%

D+4.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 49 = -2.00
  2. Actual margin = 51.504 − 46.911 = 4.593
  3. Signed miss = -2.00 − (4.593) = -6.594
  4. Absolute miss = |-6.594| = 6.594

The poll overstated the Republican by 6.6 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16787, race ID 739 (538 database).