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2020 Senate · NC

Data for Progress · fieldwork ended 2020-10-17 (17 days before the election) · 929 respondents · Online Panel/Text-to-Web · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 46% · Republican 42%

D+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 46.94% · Republican 48.69%

R+1.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 46 − 42 = 4.00
  2. Actual margin = 46.940 − 48.687 = -1.747
  3. Signed miss = 4.00 − (-1.747) = 5.747
  4. Absolute miss = |5.747| = 5.747

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.7 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 71752, race ID 6284 (538 database).