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2020 House · MT-1

The New York Times/Siena College · fieldwork ended 2020-10-19 (15 days before the election) · 758 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 46% · Republican 50%

R+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 43.61% · Republican 56.39%

R+12.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 46 − 50 = -4.00
  2. Actual margin = 43.614 − 56.386 = -12.772
  3. Signed miss = -4.00 − (-12.772) = 8.773
  4. Absolute miss = |8.773| = 8.773

The poll overstated the Democrat by 8.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 71747, race ID 8067 (538 database).