Skip to content

1998 Governor · IL

Market Shares Corp. · fieldwork ended 1998-10-19 (15 days before the election) · 1,099 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 34% · Republican 49%

R+15.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.46% · Republican 51.03%

R+3.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 34 − 49 = -15.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.464 − 51.034 = -3.570
  3. Signed miss = -15.00 − (-3.570) = -11.430
  4. Absolute miss = |-11.430| = 11.430

The poll overstated the Republican by 11.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 26083, race ID 1443 (538 database).