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2008 Senate · SD

GQR · fieldwork ended 2008-10-14 (21 days before the election) · 618 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 59% · Republican 35%

D+24.0

The certified result

Democrat 62.49% · Republican 37.51%

D+25.0

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 59 − 35 = 24.00
  2. Actual margin = 62.492 − 37.508 = 24.984
  3. Signed miss = 24.00 − (24.984) = -0.983
  4. Absolute miss = |-0.983| = 0.983

The poll overstated the Republican by 1.0 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 24078, race ID 1574 (538 database).