Skip to content

2008 Senate · MS

YouGov · fieldwork ended 2008-10-25 (10 days before the election) · 417 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 28% · Republican 56%

R+28.0

The certified result

Democrat 38.56% · Republican 61.44%

R+22.9

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 28 − 56 = -28.00
  2. Actual margin = 38.565 − 61.435 = -22.870
  3. Signed miss = -28.00 − (-22.870) = -5.130
  4. Absolute miss = |-5.130| = 5.130

The poll overstated the Republican by 5.1 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16479, race ID 1562 (538 database).