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2020 President · MI

Beacon Research/Shaw & Co. Research · fieldwork ended 2020-10-19 (15 days before the election) · 1,032 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 52% · Republican 40%

D+12.0

The certified result

Democrat 50.62% · Republican 47.84%

D+2.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 52 − 40 = 12.00
  2. Actual margin = 50.621 − 47.837 = 2.784
  3. Signed miss = 12.00 − (2.784) = 9.216
  4. Absolute miss = |9.216| = 9.216

The poll overstated the Democrat by 9.2 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 71625, race ID 6233 (538 database).