Forecasters

Margin accuracy vs the pros

The boards above grade win-calls, where the pros' proprietary modeling leads. But VotePredictor Elections' real edge is the margin — and on the same races, against the only two forecasters who publish one, it shows. We recovered 538's and the Economist's real final predicted margins (538 '18/'20/'22; Economist '20 president) and scored everyone by average margin error. VotePredictor Elections beats the Economist outright and edges 538 overall — winning on well-polled President and Senate races; 538 leads only on the thin-poll House/Governor seats where it leans on fundamentals. Lower is better.

Compare on common races

The fairest test when coverage differs: score everyone on the exact same races — the ones they all forecast. Drag the threshold to drop low-coverage forecasters; the fewer you require, the more races the survivors share. It defaults to the fair board — the six forecasters who covered ≥500 races, on the 510 they all called. Lower the bar and watch the paradox: admit one that rated only a handful and the common set collapses toward zero. Click any name to fine-tune the set.

Two columns, two questions — click either header to sort. Brier rewards confident, well-calibrated probabilities; Called right is the blunt “did they name the winner” rate. They can disagree: a forecaster can have a better Brier yet name fewer winners (its misses are mostly near-tossups it called at ~49%), so it's worth checking both.

Raw Brier (for reference)

The same forecasters on the raw Brier score of their final win probability (lower is better) — not difficulty-adjusted, so safe-race coverage flatters it. The skill board above is the fairer ranking.