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2008 Senate · GA

InsiderAdvantage · fieldwork ended 2008-11-23 (9 days before the election) · 523 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 50%

R+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 42.56% · Republican 57.44%

R+14.9

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 50 = -3.00
  2. Actual margin = 42.560 − 57.440 = -14.880
  3. Signed miss = -3.00 − (-14.880) = 11.879
  4. Absolute miss = |11.879| = 11.879

The poll overstated the Democrat by 11.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 24089, race ID 1551 (538 database).