Skip to content

2008 Senate · GA

Public Policy Polling · fieldwork ended 2008-11-22 (10 days before the election) · 871 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 46% · Republican 52%

R+6.0

The certified result

Democrat 42.56% · Republican 57.44%

R+14.9

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 46 − 52 = -6.00
  2. Actual margin = 42.560 − 57.440 = -14.880
  3. Signed miss = -6.00 − (-14.880) = 8.879
  4. Absolute miss = |8.879| = 8.879

The poll overstated the Democrat by 8.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 24115, race ID 1551 (538 database).