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2020 President · IA

SurveyMonkey · fieldwork ended 2020-10-26 (8 days before the election) · 1,489 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 48% · Republican 51%

R+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 44.89% · Republican 53.09%

R+8.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 48 − 51 = -3.00
  2. Actual margin = 44.892 − 53.089 = -8.197
  3. Signed miss = -3.00 − (-8.197) = 5.198
  4. Absolute miss = |5.198| = 5.198

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.2 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72848, race ID 6223 (538 database).