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2020 President · VA

The Washington Post/George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government · fieldwork ended 2020-10-16 (18 days before the election) · 908 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 52% · Republican 41%

D+11.0

The certified result

Democrat 54.11% · Republican 44.00%

D+10.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 52 − 41 = 11.00
  2. Actual margin = 54.110 − 43.996 = 10.114
  3. Signed miss = 11.00 − (10.114) = 0.886
  4. Absolute miss = |0.886| = 0.886

The poll overstated the Democrat by 0.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 71659, race ID 6256 (538 database).