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2020 President · IA

The New York Times/Siena College · fieldwork ended 2020-10-19 (15 days before the election) · 753 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 46% · Republican 43%

D+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 44.89% · Republican 53.09%

R+8.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 46 − 43 = 3.00
  2. Actual margin = 44.892 − 53.089 = -8.197
  3. Signed miss = 3.00 − (-8.197) = 11.198
  4. Absolute miss = |11.198| = 11.198

The poll overstated the Democrat by 11.2 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 71553, race ID 6223 (538 database).