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2008 Senate · TN

Scott Rasmussen (Rasmussen Reports) · fieldwork ended 2008-10-16 (19 days before the election) · 500 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 34% · Republican 62%

R+28.0

The certified result

Democrat 31.64% · Republican 65.14%

R+33.5

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 34 − 62 = -28.00
  2. Actual margin = 31.644 − 65.144 = -33.500
  3. Signed miss = -28.00 − (-33.500) = 5.500
  4. Absolute miss = |5.500| = 5.500

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.5 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16832, race ID 1575 (538 database).