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2020 Senate · MT

Public Policy Polling · fieldwork ended 2020-10-26 (8 days before the election) · 886 respondents · IVR/Text · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 48% · Republican 47%

D+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 44.99% · Republican 55.01%

R+10.0

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 48 − 47 = 1.00
  2. Actual margin = 44.988 − 55.012 = -10.024
  3. Signed miss = 1.00 − (-10.024) = 11.024
  4. Absolute miss = |11.024| = 11.024

The poll overstated the Democrat by 11.0 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72062, race ID 6283 (538 database).