Skip to content

2020 Senate · SD

Nielson Brothers Polling · fieldwork ended 2020-10-26 (8 days before the election) · 479 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 39% · Republican 56%

R+17.0

The certified result

Democrat 34.27% · Republican 65.73%

R+31.5

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 39 − 56 = -17.00
  2. Actual margin = 34.265 − 65.735 = -31.470
  3. Signed miss = -17.00 − (-31.470) = 14.470
  4. Absolute miss = |14.470| = 14.470

The poll overstated the Democrat by 14.5 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72794, race ID 6293 (538 database).