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2020 President · NC

Emerson College · fieldwork ended 2020-10-30 (4 days before the election) · 855 respondents · IVR/Online Panel/Text-to-Web

The poll said

Democrat 47.4% · Republican 47.1%

D+0.3

The certified result

Democrat 48.59% · Republican 49.93%

R+1.3

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47.4 − 47.1 = 0.30
  2. Actual margin = 48.586 − 49.934 = -1.348
  3. Signed miss = 0.30 − (-1.348) = 1.648
  4. Absolute miss = |1.648| = 1.648

The poll overstated the Democrat by 1.6 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72515, race ID 6238 (538 database).