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2020 President · national

The New York Times/Siena College · fieldwork ended 2020-10-17 (17 days before the election) · 987 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 50% · Republican 41%

D+9.0

The certified result

Democrat 51.07% · Republican 46.67%

D+4.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 50 − 41 = 9.00
  2. Actual margin = 51.068 − 46.672 = 4.396
  3. Signed miss = 9.00 − (4.396) = 4.604
  4. Absolute miss = |4.604| = 4.604

The poll overstated the Democrat by 4.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 71439, race ID 6210 (538 database).