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2008 Senate · ME

YouGov · fieldwork ended 2008-10-25 (10 days before the election) · 486 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 35% · Republican 55%

R+20.0

The certified result

Democrat 38.58% · Republican 61.33%

R+22.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 35 − 55 = -20.00
  2. Actual margin = 38.583 − 61.331 = -22.748
  3. Signed miss = -20.00 − (-22.748) = 2.748
  4. Absolute miss = |2.748| = 2.748

The poll overstated the Democrat by 2.7 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16455, race ID 1558 (538 database).