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2008 Senate · AK

YouGov · fieldwork ended 2008-10-25 (10 days before the election) · 358 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 44% · Republican 42%

D+2.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.77% · Republican 46.52%

D+1.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 44 − 42 = 2.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.767 − 46.523 = 1.244
  3. Signed miss = 2.00 − (1.244) = 0.756
  4. Absolute miss = |0.756| = 0.756

The poll overstated the Democrat by 0.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16449, race ID 1546 (538 database).