Skip to content

2020 President · IA

RMG Research · fieldwork ended 2020-10-18 (16 days before the election) · 800 respondents · IVR/Text-to-Web/Online Ad

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 47%

even

The certified result

Democrat 44.89% · Republican 53.09%

R+8.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 47 = 0.00
  2. Actual margin = 44.892 − 53.089 = -8.197
  3. Signed miss = 0.00 − (-8.197) = 8.198
  4. Absolute miss = |8.198| = 8.198

The poll overstated the Democrat by 8.2 points and showed a tie.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 71733, race ID 6223 (538 database).