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2020 Governor · 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 44% · Republican 48%

R+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 41.56% · Republican 54.43%

R+12.9

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 44 − 48 = -4.00
  2. Actual margin = 41.562 − 54.433 = -12.871
  3. Signed miss = -4.00 − (-12.871) = 8.871
  4. Absolute miss = |8.871| = 8.871

The poll overstated the Democrat by 8.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 71747, race ID 7821 (538 database).