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2020 Governor · MT

RMG Research · fieldwork ended 2020-10-17 (17 days before the election) · 800 respondents · IVR/Text

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 48%

R+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 41.56% · Republican 54.43%

R+12.9

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 48 = -3.00
  2. Actual margin = 41.562 − 54.433 = -12.871
  3. Signed miss = -3.00 − (-12.871) = 9.871
  4. Absolute miss = |9.871| = 9.871

The poll overstated the Democrat by 9.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 71363, race ID 7821 (538 database).