Skip to content

2008 House · MN-3

SurveyUSA · fieldwork ended 2008-10-29 (6 days before the election) · 647 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 41% · Republican 46%

R+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 40.85% · Republican 48.48%

R+7.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 41 − 46 = -5.00
  2. Actual margin = 40.852 − 48.477 = -7.625
  3. Signed miss = -5.00 − (-7.625) = 2.625
  4. Absolute miss = |2.625| = 2.625

The poll overstated the Democrat by 2.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 64363, race ID 4241 (538 database).