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2020 President · IA

Public Policy Polling · fieldwork ended 2020-11-01 (2 days before the election) · 871 respondents · IVR/Text

The poll said

Democrat 49% · Republican 48%

D+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 44.89% · Republican 53.09%

R+8.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 49 − 48 = 1.00
  2. Actual margin = 44.892 − 53.089 = -8.197
  3. Signed miss = 1.00 − (-8.197) = 9.198
  4. Absolute miss = |9.198| = 9.198

The poll overstated the Democrat by 9.2 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72621, race ID 6223 (538 database).