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2020 President · M2

SurveyUSA · fieldwork ended 2020-10-25 (9 days before the election) · 509 respondents · IVR/Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 48% · Republican 45%

D+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 44.82% · Republican 52.26%

R+7.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 48 − 45 = 3.00
  2. Actual margin = 44.824 − 52.263 = -7.439
  3. Signed miss = 3.00 − (-7.439) = 10.439
  4. Absolute miss = |10.439| = 10.439

The poll overstated the Democrat by 10.4 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72177, race ID 8423 (538 database).