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2008 Senate · WV

Public Policy Polling · fieldwork ended 2008-10-29 (6 days before the election) · 2,128 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 58% · Republican 40%

D+18.0

The certified result

Democrat 63.73% · Republican 36.26%

D+27.5

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 58 − 40 = 18.00
  2. Actual margin = 63.727 − 36.256 = 27.471
  3. Signed miss = 18.00 − (27.471) = -9.471
  4. Absolute miss = |-9.471| = 9.471

The poll overstated the Republican by 9.5 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16527, race ID 1578 (538 database).