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2008 President · OH

Los Angeles Times · fieldwork ended 2008-10-26 (9 days before the election) · 644 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 44% · Republican 39%

D+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 51.50% · Republican 46.91%

D+4.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 44 − 39 = 5.00
  2. Actual margin = 51.504 − 46.911 = 4.593
  3. Signed miss = 5.00 − (4.593) = 0.406
  4. Absolute miss = |0.406| = 0.406

The poll overstated the Democrat by 0.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16627, race ID 739 (538 database).