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2020 Senate · NC

Data for Progress · fieldwork ended 2020-10-29 (5 days before the election) · 908 respondents · Online Panel/Text-to-Web

The poll said

Democrat 51% · Republican 46%

D+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 46.94% · Republican 48.69%

R+1.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 51 − 46 = 5.00
  2. Actual margin = 46.940 − 48.687 = -1.747
  3. Signed miss = 5.00 − (-1.747) = 6.747
  4. Absolute miss = |6.747| = 6.747

The poll overstated the Democrat by 6.7 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72581, race ID 6284 (538 database).