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2020 Senate · VA

Data for Progress · fieldwork ended 2020-10-29 (5 days before the election) · 690 respondents · Online Panel/Text-to-Web

The poll said

Democrat 57% · Republican 42%

D+15.0

The certified result

Democrat 55.99% · Republican 43.91%

D+12.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 57 − 42 = 15.00
  2. Actual margin = 55.992 − 43.908 = 12.084
  3. Signed miss = 15.00 − (12.084) = 2.916
  4. Absolute miss = |2.916| = 2.916

The poll overstated the Democrat by 2.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72590, race ID 6296 (538 database).