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2008 President · SD

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2008-10-14 (21 days before the election) · 800 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 41% · Republican 48%

R+7.0

The certified result

Democrat 44.75% · Republican 53.16%

R+8.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 41 − 48 = -7.00
  2. Actual margin = 44.747 − 53.159 = -8.412
  3. Signed miss = -7.00 − (-8.412) = 1.412
  4. Absolute miss = |1.412| = 1.412

The poll overstated the Democrat by 1.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16846, race ID 745 (538 database).