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2020 President · MI

ABC News/The Washington Post · fieldwork ended 2020-10-22 (12 days before the election) · 789 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 51% · Republican 44%

D+7.0

The certified result

Democrat 50.62% · Republican 47.84%

D+2.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 51 − 44 = 7.00
  2. Actual margin = 50.621 − 47.837 = 2.784
  3. Signed miss = 7.00 − (2.784) = 4.216
  4. Absolute miss = |4.216| = 4.216

The poll overstated the Democrat by 4.2 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72074, race ID 6233 (538 database).