Skip to content

2020 President · national

Change Research · fieldwork ended 2020-10-23 (11 days before the election) · 1,125 respondents · Text-to-Web/Online Ad

The poll said

Democrat 51% · Republican 43%

D+8.0

The certified result

Democrat 51.07% · Republican 46.67%

D+4.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 51 − 43 = 8.00
  2. Actual margin = 51.068 − 46.672 = 4.396
  3. Signed miss = 8.00 − (4.396) = 3.604
  4. Absolute miss = |3.604| = 3.604

The poll overstated the Democrat by 3.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72084, race ID 6210 (538 database).