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2008 House · PA-3

Public Opinion Strategies · fieldwork ended 2008-10-22 (13 days before the election) · 400 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (REP)

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 47%

R+2.0

The certified result

Democrat 51.25% · Republican 48.75%

D+2.5

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 47 = -2.00
  2. Actual margin = 51.246 − 48.754 = 2.492
  3. Signed miss = -2.00 − (2.492) = -4.491
  4. Absolute miss = |-4.491| = 4.491

The poll overstated the Republican by 4.5 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 64180, race ID 4358 (538 database).