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2020 House · VA-5

Public Policy Polling · fieldwork ended 2020-10-21 (13 days before the election) · 910 respondents · IVR/Text · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 46% · Republican 43%

D+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.30% · Republican 52.44%

R+5.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 46 − 43 = 3.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.305 − 52.443 = -5.138
  3. Signed miss = 3.00 − (-5.138) = 8.138
  4. Absolute miss = |8.138| = 8.138

The poll overstated the Democrat by 8.1 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 71751, race ID 8241 (538 database).