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2020 Senate · ME

Change Research · fieldwork ended 2020-10-31 (3 days before the election) · 1,024 respondents · Text-to-Web/Online Ad

The poll said

Democrat 54% · Republican 46%

D+8.0

The certified result

Democrat 42.39% · Republican 50.98%

R+8.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 54 − 46 = 8.00
  2. Actual margin = 42.386 − 50.983 = -8.597
  3. Signed miss = 8.00 − (-8.597) = 16.597
  4. Absolute miss = |16.597| = 16.597

The poll overstated the Democrat by 16.6 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72801, race ID 6279 (538 database).