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2020 President · MT

Montana State University Billings · fieldwork ended 2020-10-21 (13 days before the election) · 546 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 52%

R+7.0

The certified result

Democrat 40.55% · Republican 56.92%

R+16.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 52 = -7.00
  2. Actual margin = 40.550 − 56.919 = -16.369
  3. Signed miss = -7.00 − (-16.369) = 9.369
  4. Absolute miss = |9.369| = 9.369

The poll overstated the Democrat by 9.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72162, race ID 6237 (538 database).