Skip to content

2008 Governor · NC

Scott Rasmussen (Rasmussen Reports) · fieldwork ended 2008-10-23 (12 days before the election) · 700 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 51%

R+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 50.27% · Republican 46.88%

D+3.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 51 = -4.00
  2. Actual margin = 50.275 − 46.877 = 3.398
  3. Signed miss = -4.00 − (3.398) = -7.397
  4. Absolute miss = |-7.397| = 7.397

The poll overstated the Republican by 7.4 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16704, race ID 1323 (538 database).