Skip to content

2020 Senate · MA

YouGov · fieldwork ended 2020-10-18 (16 days before the election) · 713 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 65% · Republican 26%

D+39.0

The certified result

Democrat 66.15% · Republican 33.05%

D+33.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 65 − 26 = 39.00
  2. Actual margin = 66.154 − 33.045 = 33.109
  3. Signed miss = 39.00 − (33.109) = 5.891
  4. Absolute miss = |5.891| = 5.891

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 71972, race ID 6278 (538 database).