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2008 House · LA-4

Public Opinion Strategies · fieldwork ended 2008-11-17 (19 days before the election) · 400 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (REP)

The poll said

Democrat 42% · Republican 43%

R+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.69% · Republican 48.07%

R+0.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 42 − 43 = -1.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.694 − 48.072 = -0.378
  3. Signed miss = -1.00 − (-0.378) = -0.622
  4. Absolute miss = |-0.622| = 0.622

The poll overstated the Republican by 0.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 73939, race ID 4200 (538 database).