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2020 President · national

Change Research · fieldwork ended 2020-10-31 (3 days before the election) · 1,880 respondents · Text-to-Web/Online Ad

The poll said

Democrat 52% · Republican 42%

D+10.0

The certified result

Democrat 51.07% · Republican 46.67%

D+4.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 52 − 42 = 10.00
  2. Actual margin = 51.068 − 46.672 = 4.396
  3. Signed miss = 10.00 − (4.396) = 5.604
  4. Absolute miss = |5.604| = 5.604

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72725, race ID 6210 (538 database).