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2020 Senate · MI

The New York Times/Siena College · fieldwork ended 2020-10-25 (9 days before the election) · 856 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 49% · Republican 41%

D+8.0

The certified result

Democrat 49.90% · Republican 48.22%

D+1.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 49 − 41 = 8.00
  2. Actual margin = 49.903 − 48.218 = 1.685
  3. Signed miss = 8.00 − (1.685) = 6.315
  4. Absolute miss = |6.315| = 6.315

The poll overstated the Democrat by 6.3 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72152, race ID 6280 (538 database).