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2020 President · MT

Public Policy Polling · fieldwork ended 2020-10-26 (8 days before the election) · 886 respondents · IVR/Text · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 49%

R+2.0

The certified result

Democrat 40.55% · Republican 56.92%

R+16.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 49 = -2.00
  2. Actual margin = 40.550 − 56.919 = -16.369
  3. Signed miss = -2.00 − (-16.369) = 14.369
  4. Absolute miss = |14.369| = 14.369

The poll overstated the Democrat by 14.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72062, race ID 6237 (538 database).