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2008 House · WA-8

SurveyUSA · fieldwork ended 2008-10-20 (15 days before the election) · 442 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 50% · Republican 46%

D+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.22% · Republican 52.78%

R+5.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 50 − 46 = 4.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.216 − 52.784 = -5.568
  3. Signed miss = 4.00 − (-5.568) = 9.569
  4. Absolute miss = |9.569| = 9.569

The poll overstated the Democrat by 9.6 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 73986, race ID 4447 (538 database).