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2008 Senate · ME

Pan Atlantic Research · fieldwork ended 2008-10-15 (20 days before the election) · 400 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 36% · Republican 57%

R+21.0

The certified result

Democrat 38.58% · Republican 61.33%

R+22.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 36 − 57 = -21.00
  2. Actual margin = 38.583 − 61.331 = -22.748
  3. Signed miss = -21.00 − (-22.748) = 1.748
  4. Absolute miss = |1.748| = 1.748

The poll overstated the Democrat by 1.7 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 24156, race ID 1558 (538 database).