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2008 President · SD

GQR · fieldwork ended 2008-10-27 (8 days before the election) · 613 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 40% · Republican 45%

R+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 44.75% · Republican 53.16%

R+8.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 40 − 45 = -5.00
  2. Actual margin = 44.747 − 53.159 = -8.412
  3. Signed miss = -5.00 − (-8.412) = 3.412
  4. Absolute miss = |3.412| = 3.412

The poll overstated the Democrat by 3.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 77566, race ID 745 (538 database).