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2020 Senate · NC

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

The poll said

Democrat 48.39% · Republican 42.27%

D+6.1

The certified result

Democrat 46.94% · Republican 48.69%

R+1.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 48.39 − 42.27 = 6.12
  2. Actual margin = 46.940 − 48.687 = -1.747
  3. Signed miss = 6.12 − (-1.747) = 7.867
  4. Absolute miss = |7.867| = 7.867

The poll overstated the Democrat by 7.9 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72183, race ID 6284 (538 database).