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2020 President · M2

Change Research · fieldwork ended 2020-10-31 (3 days before the election) · 475 respondents · Text-to-Web/Online Ad

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 46%

D+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 44.82% · Republican 52.26%

R+7.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 46 = 1.00
  2. Actual margin = 44.824 − 52.263 = -7.439
  3. Signed miss = 1.00 − (-7.439) = 8.439
  4. Absolute miss = |8.439| = 8.439

The poll overstated the Democrat by 8.4 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72802, race ID 8423 (538 database).