Skip to content

1998 Senate · NY

Zogby Analytics · fieldwork ended 1998-10-26 (8 days before the election) · 700 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 44% · Republican 38%

D+6.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.82% · Republican 33.67%

D+14.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 44 − 38 = 6.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.823 − 33.672 = 14.151
  3. Signed miss = 6.00 − (14.151) = -8.151
  4. Absolute miss = |-8.151| = 8.151

The poll overstated the Republican by 8.2 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 26278, race ID 1738 (538 database).