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2020 President · ID

SurveyMonkey · fieldwork ended 2020-10-26 (8 days before the election) · 909 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 40% · Republican 58%

R+18.0

The certified result

Democrat 33.07% · Republican 63.84%

R+30.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 40 − 58 = -18.00
  2. Actual margin = 33.066 − 63.838 = -30.772
  3. Signed miss = -18.00 − (-30.772) = 12.771
  4. Absolute miss = |12.771| = 12.771

The poll overstated the Democrat by 12.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72847, race ID 6224 (538 database).