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2008 President · AL

YouGov · fieldwork ended 2008-10-25 (10 days before the election) · 452 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 39% · Republican 57%

R+18.0

The certified result

Democrat 38.74% · Republican 60.32%

R+21.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 39 − 57 = -18.00
  2. Actual margin = 38.740 − 60.317 = -21.577
  3. Signed miss = -18.00 − (-21.577) = 3.576
  4. Absolute miss = |3.576| = 3.576

The poll overstated the Democrat by 3.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16473, race ID 705 (538 database).