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2020 President · OH

Emerson College · fieldwork ended 2020-10-30 (4 days before the election) · 656 respondents · IVR/Online Panel/Text-to-Web

The poll said

Democrat 49.6% · Republican 48.7%

D+0.9

The certified result

Democrat 45.24% · Republican 53.27%

R+8.0

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 49.6 − 48.7 = 0.90
  2. Actual margin = 45.239 − 53.271 = -8.032
  3. Signed miss = 0.90 − (-8.032) = 8.932
  4. Absolute miss = |8.932| = 8.932

The poll overstated the Democrat by 8.9 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72488, race ID 6246 (538 database).