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2008 Senate · LA

OnMessage Inc. · fieldwork ended 2008-10-28 (7 days before the election) · 500 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (REP)

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 44%

D+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 52.11% · Republican 45.72%

D+6.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 44 = 1.00
  2. Actual margin = 52.110 − 45.723 = 6.387
  3. Signed miss = 1.00 − (6.387) = -5.386
  4. Absolute miss = |-5.386| = 5.386

The poll overstated the Republican by 5.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 24112, race ID 1557 (538 database).