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2020 President · SD

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2020-10-20 (14 days before the election) · 625 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 40% · Republican 51%

R+11.0

The certified result

Democrat 35.60% · Republican 61.77%

R+26.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 40 − 51 = -11.00
  2. Actual margin = 35.605 − 61.769 = -26.164
  3. Signed miss = -11.00 − (-26.164) = 15.164
  4. Absolute miss = |15.164| = 15.164

The poll overstated the Democrat by 15.2 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 71881, race ID 6252 (538 database).