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2008 President · GA

InsiderAdvantage · fieldwork ended 2008-10-23 (12 days before the election) · 615 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 48% · Republican 47%

D+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 46.99% · Republican 52.20%

R+5.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 48 − 47 = 1.00
  2. Actual margin = 46.990 − 52.205 = -5.215
  3. Signed miss = 1.00 − (-5.215) = 6.214
  4. Absolute miss = |6.214| = 6.214

The poll overstated the Democrat by 6.2 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16691, race ID 714 (538 database).