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2020 President · MT

The New York Times/Siena College · fieldwork ended 2020-10-19 (15 days before the election) · 758 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 43% · Republican 49%

R+6.0

The certified result

Democrat 40.55% · Republican 56.92%

R+16.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 43 − 49 = -6.00
  2. Actual margin = 40.550 − 56.919 = -16.369
  3. Signed miss = -6.00 − (-16.369) = 10.369
  4. Absolute miss = |10.369| = 10.369

The poll overstated the Democrat by 10.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 71747, race ID 6237 (538 database).