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2020 President · N2

Change Research · fieldwork ended 2020-10-31 (3 days before the election) · 547 respondents · Text-to-Web/Online Ad

The poll said

Democrat 50% · Republican 47%

D+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 51.95% · Republican 45.45%

D+6.5

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 50 − 47 = 3.00
  2. Actual margin = 51.953 − 45.450 = 6.503
  3. Signed miss = 3.00 − (6.503) = -3.504
  4. Absolute miss = |-3.504| = 3.504

The poll overstated the Republican by 3.5 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72757, race ID 8718 (538 database).