Skip to content

2008 President · VA

Scott Rasmussen (Rasmussen Reports) · fieldwork ended 2008-10-16 (19 days before the election) · 700 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 54% · Republican 44%

D+10.0

The certified result

Democrat 52.63% · Republican 46.33%

D+6.3

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 54 − 44 = 10.00
  2. Actual margin = 52.629 − 46.331 = 6.298
  3. Signed miss = 10.00 − (6.298) = 3.701
  4. Absolute miss = |3.701| = 3.701

The poll overstated the Democrat by 3.7 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16834, race ID 749 (538 database).