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2020 President · IA

Data for Progress · fieldwork ended 2020-10-29 (5 days before the election) · 951 respondents · Online Panel/Text-to-Web

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 49%

R+2.0

The certified result

Democrat 44.89% · Republican 53.09%

R+8.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 49 = -2.00
  2. Actual margin = 44.892 − 53.089 = -8.197
  3. Signed miss = -2.00 − (-8.197) = 6.198
  4. Absolute miss = |6.198| = 6.198

The poll overstated the Democrat by 6.2 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72741, race ID 6223 (538 database).