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2020 President · national

Beacon Research/Shaw & Co. Research · fieldwork ended 2020-10-28 (6 days before the election) · 1,246 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 52% · Republican 44%

D+8.0

The certified result

Democrat 51.07% · Republican 46.67%

D+4.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 52 − 44 = 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 72343, race ID 6210 (538 database).