Skip to content

2008 President · MT

YouGov · fieldwork ended 2008-10-25 (10 days before the election) · 368 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 44% · Republican 54%

R+10.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.25% · Republican 49.51%

R+2.3

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 44 − 54 = -10.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.250 − 49.513 = -2.263
  3. Signed miss = -10.00 − (-2.263) = -7.737
  4. Absolute miss = |-7.737| = 7.737

The poll overstated the Republican by 7.7 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16491, race ID 730 (538 database).