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2008 Senate · IL

YouGov · fieldwork ended 2008-10-25 (10 days before the election) · 783 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 54% · Republican 31%

D+23.0

The certified result

Democrat 67.84% · Republican 28.53%

D+39.3

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 54 − 31 = 23.00
  2. Actual margin = 67.841 − 28.530 = 39.311
  3. Signed miss = 23.00 − (39.311) = -16.311
  4. Absolute miss = |-16.311| = 16.311

The poll overstated the Republican by 16.3 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16488, race ID 1553 (538 database).