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2020 President · NC

Citizen Data · fieldwork ended 2020-10-19 (15 days before the election) · 1,000 respondents · IVR/Text-to-Web

The poll said

Democrat 50.15% · Republican 43.63%

D+6.5

The certified result

Democrat 48.59% · Republican 49.93%

R+1.3

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 50.15 − 43.63 = 6.52
  2. Actual margin = 48.586 − 49.934 = -1.348
  3. Signed miss = 6.52 − (-1.348) = 7.868
  4. Absolute miss = |7.868| = 7.868

The poll overstated the Democrat by 7.9 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72183, race ID 6238 (538 database).