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2020 Senate · MT

Change Research · fieldwork ended 2020-10-31 (3 days before the election) · 920 respondents · Text-to-Web/Online Ad

The poll said

Democrat 46% · Republican 50%

R+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 44.99% · Republican 55.01%

R+10.0

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 46 − 50 = -4.00
  2. Actual margin = 44.988 − 55.012 = -10.024
  3. Signed miss = -4.00 − (-10.024) = 6.024
  4. Absolute miss = |6.024| = 6.024

The poll overstated the Democrat by 6.0 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72762, race ID 6283 (538 database).