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2020 President · AK

Public Policy Polling · fieldwork ended 2020-10-19 (15 days before the election) · 800 respondents · IVR/Text · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 50%

R+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 42.77% · Republican 52.83%

R+10.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 50 = -5.00
  2. Actual margin = 42.772 − 52.833 = -10.061
  3. Signed miss = -5.00 − (-10.061) = 5.061
  4. Absolute miss = |5.061| = 5.061

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.1 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 71560, race ID 6211 (538 database).