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2008 Senate · GA

Scott Rasmussen (Rasmussen Reports) · fieldwork ended 2008-11-18 (14 days before the election) · 700 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 46% · Republican 50%

R+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 42.56% · Republican 57.44%

R+14.9

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 46 − 50 = -4.00
  2. Actual margin = 42.560 − 57.440 = -14.880
  3. Signed miss = -4.00 − (-14.880) = 10.879
  4. Absolute miss = |10.879| = 10.879

The poll overstated the Democrat by 10.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 24130, race ID 1551 (538 database).