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2008 President · OH

Big Ten · fieldwork ended 2008-10-21 (14 days before the election) · 564 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 53% · Republican 41%

D+12.0

The certified result

Democrat 51.50% · Republican 46.91%

D+4.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 53 − 41 = 12.00
  2. Actual margin = 51.504 − 46.911 = 4.593
  3. Signed miss = 12.00 − (4.593) = 7.406
  4. Absolute miss = |7.406| = 7.406

The poll overstated the Democrat by 7.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16713, race ID 739 (538 database).