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2020 President · MS

SurveyMonkey · fieldwork ended 2020-10-26 (8 days before the election) · 1,461 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 37% · Republican 61%

R+24.0

The certified result

Democrat 41.06% · Republican 57.60%

R+16.5

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 37 − 61 = -24.00
  2. Actual margin = 41.058 − 57.603 = -16.545
  3. Signed miss = -24.00 − (-16.545) = -7.455
  4. Absolute miss = |-7.455| = 7.455

The poll overstated the Republican by 7.5 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72835, race ID 6236 (538 database).