Skip to content

2008 Senate · KY

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2008-10-28 (7 days before the election) · 817 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 42% · Republican 47%

R+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.03% · Republican 52.97%

R+5.9

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 42 − 47 = -5.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.034 − 52.966 = -5.932
  3. Signed miss = -5.00 − (-5.932) = 0.931
  4. Absolute miss = |0.931| = 0.931

The poll overstated the Democrat by 0.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16558, race ID 1556 (538 database).