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2008 Senate · OR

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

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 47%

even

The certified result

Democrat 48.91% · Republican 45.55%

D+3.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 47 = 0.00
  2. Actual margin = 48.905 − 45.553 = 3.352
  3. Signed miss = 0.00 − (3.352) = -3.351
  4. Absolute miss = |-3.351| = 3.351

The poll overstated the Republican by 3.4 points and showed a tie.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16861, race ID 1571 (538 database).