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2020 President · MA

SurveyMonkey · fieldwork ended 2020-10-26 (8 days before the election) · 3,653 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 69% · Republican 29%

D+40.0

The certified result

Democrat 65.60% · Republican 32.14%

D+33.5

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 69 − 29 = 40.00
  2. Actual margin = 65.600 − 32.142 = 33.458
  3. Signed miss = 40.00 − (33.458) = 6.542
  4. Absolute miss = |6.542| = 6.542

The poll overstated the Democrat by 6.5 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72841, race ID 6230 (538 database).