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2020 Senate · NC

Ipsos · fieldwork ended 2020-10-24 (10 days before the election) · 647 respondents · Probability Panel

The poll said

Democrat 48% · Republican 47%

D+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 46.94% · Republican 48.69%

R+1.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 48 − 47 = 1.00
  2. Actual margin = 46.940 − 48.687 = -1.747
  3. Signed miss = 1.00 − (-1.747) = 2.747
  4. Absolute miss = |2.747| = 2.747

The poll overstated the Democrat by 2.7 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72059, race ID 6284 (538 database).