Skip to content

1998 Governor · NY

Zogby Analytics · fieldwork ended 1998-10-23 (11 days before the election) · 700 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 22% · Republican 53%

R+31.0

The certified result

Democrat 30.47% · Republican 44.59%

R+14.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 22 − 53 = -31.00
  2. Actual margin = 30.466 − 44.591 = -14.125
  3. Signed miss = -31.00 − (-14.125) = -16.875
  4. Absolute miss = |-16.875| = 16.875

The poll overstated the Republican by 16.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 26281, race ID 1455 (538 database).