Skip to content

2020 President · PA

Public Policy Polling · fieldwork ended 2020-10-28 (6 days before the election) · 1,012 respondents · IVR/Text · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 52% · Republican 45%

D+7.0

The certified result

Democrat 50.01% · Republican 48.84%

D+1.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 52 − 45 = 7.00
  2. Actual margin = 50.008 − 48.844 = 1.164
  3. Signed miss = 7.00 − (1.164) = 5.835
  4. Absolute miss = |5.835| = 5.835

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72328, race ID 6249 (538 database).