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2020 President · PA

Beacon Research/Shaw & Co. Research · fieldwork ended 2020-10-19 (15 days before the election) · 1,045 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 50% · Republican 45%

D+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 50.01% · Republican 48.84%

D+1.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 50 − 45 = 5.00
  2. Actual margin = 50.008 − 48.844 = 1.164
  3. Signed miss = 5.00 − (1.164) = 3.835
  4. Absolute miss = |3.835| = 3.835

The poll overstated the Democrat by 3.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 71627, race ID 6249 (538 database).