Skip to content

2020 President · NC

Public Policy Polling · fieldwork ended 2020-10-26 (8 days before the election) · 937 respondents · IVR/Text · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 51% · Republican 47%

D+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 48.59% · Republican 49.93%

R+1.3

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 51 − 47 = 4.00
  2. Actual margin = 48.586 − 49.934 = -1.348
  3. Signed miss = 4.00 − (-1.348) = 5.348
  4. Absolute miss = |5.348| = 5.348

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.3 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72057, race ID 6238 (538 database).