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2008 President · MT

Montana State University Billings · fieldwork ended 2008-10-18 (17 days before the election) · 403 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 44% · Republican 40%

D+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.25% · Republican 49.51%

R+2.3

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 44 − 40 = 4.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.250 − 49.513 = -2.263
  3. Signed miss = 4.00 − (-2.263) = 6.263
  4. Absolute miss = |6.263| = 6.263

The poll overstated the Democrat by 6.3 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16768, race ID 730 (538 database).