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2020 Senate · IA

Emerson College · fieldwork ended 2020-10-30 (4 days before the election) · 604 respondents · IVR/Online Panel/Text-to-Web

The poll said

Democrat 50.8% · Republican 47.7%

D+3.1

The certified result

Democrat 45.15% · Republican 51.74%

R+6.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 50.8 − 47.7 = 3.10
  2. Actual margin = 45.152 − 51.740 = -6.588
  3. Signed miss = 3.10 − (-6.588) = 9.688
  4. Absolute miss = |9.688| = 9.688

The poll overstated the Democrat by 9.7 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72489, race ID 6272 (538 database).