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2020 House · VA-2

Christopher Newport University Wason Center for Civic Leadership · fieldwork ended 2020-10-13 (21 days before the election) · 807 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 50% · Republican 43%

D+7.0

The certified result

Democrat 51.55% · Republican 45.81%

D+5.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 50 − 43 = 7.00
  2. Actual margin = 51.553 − 45.807 = 5.746
  3. Signed miss = 7.00 − (5.746) = 1.254
  4. Absolute miss = |1.254| = 1.254

The poll overstated the Democrat by 1.3 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 71540, race ID 8238 (538 database).