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2020 Senate · AL

Data for Progress · fieldwork ended 2020-10-29 (5 days before the election) · 1,045 respondents · Online Panel/Text-to-Web

The poll said

Democrat 44% · Republican 56%

R+12.0

The certified result

Democrat 39.74% · Republican 60.09%

R+20.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 44 − 56 = -12.00
  2. Actual margin = 39.737 − 60.095 = -20.358
  3. Signed miss = -12.00 − (-20.358) = 8.359
  4. Absolute miss = |8.359| = 8.359

The poll overstated the Democrat by 8.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72591, race ID 6266 (538 database).