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2020 President · PA

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

The poll said

Democrat 43.99% · Republican 38.67%

D+5.3

The certified result

Democrat 50.01% · Republican 48.84%

D+1.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 43.99 − 38.67 = 5.32
  2. Actual margin = 50.008 − 48.844 = 1.164
  3. Signed miss = 5.32 − (1.164) = 4.155
  4. Absolute miss = |4.155| = 4.155

The poll overstated the Democrat by 4.2 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72185, race ID 6249 (538 database).