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2020 Senate · MI

Citizen Data · fieldwork ended 2020-10-19 (15 days before the election) · 1,000 respondents · IVR/Text-to-Web

The poll said

Democrat 45.86% · Republican 42.31%

D+3.5

The certified result

Democrat 49.90% · Republican 48.22%

D+1.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45.86 − 42.31 = 3.55
  2. Actual margin = 49.903 − 48.218 = 1.685
  3. Signed miss = 3.55 − (1.685) = 1.865
  4. Absolute miss = |1.865| = 1.865

The poll overstated the Democrat by 1.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72182, race ID 6280 (538 database).