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2008 Senate · NC

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2008-10-28 (7 days before the election) · 625 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 46%

R+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 52.65% · Republican 44.18%

D+8.5

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 46 = -1.00
  2. Actual margin = 52.653 − 44.184 = 8.469
  3. Signed miss = -1.00 − (8.469) = -9.469
  4. Absolute miss = |-9.469| = 9.469

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

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16556, race ID 1569 (538 database).