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2020 Senate · VA

The Washington Post/George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government · fieldwork ended 2020-10-16 (18 days before the election) · 908 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 57% · Republican 39%

D+18.0

The certified result

Democrat 55.99% · Republican 43.91%

D+12.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 57 − 39 = 18.00
  2. Actual margin = 55.992 − 43.908 = 12.084
  3. Signed miss = 18.00 − (12.084) = 5.916
  4. Absolute miss = |5.916| = 5.916

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 71659, race ID 6296 (538 database).