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2008 House · AL-2

GQR · fieldwork ended 2008-10-20 (15 days before the election) · 403 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 50% · Republican 43%

D+7.0

The certified result

Democrat 50.23% · Republican 49.61%

D+0.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 50 − 43 = 7.00
  2. Actual margin = 50.233 − 49.611 = 0.622
  3. Signed miss = 7.00 − (0.622) = 6.377
  4. Absolute miss = |6.377| = 6.377

The poll overstated the Democrat by 6.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 64070, race ID 4027 (538 database).