Skip to content

2008 Senate · KY

Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group · fieldwork ended 2008-10-26 (9 days before the election) · 502 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 47%

R+2.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.03% · Republican 52.97%

R+5.9

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 47 = -2.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.034 − 52.966 = -5.932
  3. Signed miss = -2.00 − (-5.932) = 3.931
  4. Absolute miss = |3.931| = 3.931

The poll overstated the Democrat by 3.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 24075, race ID 1556 (538 database).