Skip to content

2008 House · PA-11

SurveyUSA · fieldwork ended 2008-11-01 (3 days before the election) · 622 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 51%

R+6.0

The certified result

Democrat 51.63% · Republican 48.37%

D+3.3

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 51 = -6.00
  2. Actual margin = 51.627 − 48.373 = 3.254
  3. Signed miss = -6.00 − (3.254) = -9.255
  4. Absolute miss = |-9.255| = 9.255

The poll overstated the Republican by 9.3 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 64364, race ID 4366 (538 database).