Global Strategy Group
Graded against the actual result across 83 races (from 101 polls, through 2022).
Head-to-head vs the VotePredictor model
The fair, apples-to-apples test: on the 82 races Global Strategy Group actually polled, how its final poll's margin compared to what the VotePredictor model predicted for those same races.
| Model | Avg miss (pts) | Called right |
|---|---|---|
| Global Strategy Group | 5.84 | 67% |
| VotePredictor | 4.44 | 79% |
VotePredictor aggregates all the pollsters, so it's expected to beat any single one on margin — that's the value of averaging. The honest comparison among forecasters is on the combined board.
Every race (83)
Each race Global Strategy Group polled, scored on its final poll — the call right before the vote — against the actual Dem−Rep result. Click a race for its full detail.
Accuracy by time to election
Lower is better. Time to election runs right (election week) to left (~2 months out).
By the numbers
| Time to election | Polls | Avg miss | vs field | Called right |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1–3 wk | 24 | 5.32 | +0.25 | 71% |
| 3–6 wk | 48 | 6.15 | +0.41 | 71% |
| 6–9 wk | 29 | 5.19 | -0.96 | 66% |
vs field is this pollster's average miss minus all pollsters' at the same lead time — green beats the field, redtrails it. Our historical polls reach ~2 months out; earlier polling isn't in the record.
Track record by cycle — getting better?
| Year | Polls | Avg miss | Lean (house effect) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | 13 | 7.7 | D+7.7 |
| 2006 | 4 | 4.2 | R+1.9 |
| 2008 | 3 | 4.9 | R+0.5 |
| 2010 | 13 | 6.1 | D+4.0 |
| 2012 | 15 | 4.0 | R+0.0 |
| 2014 | 11 | 6.8 | D+6.8 |
| 2016 | 11 | 6.8 | D+6.7 |
| 2018 | 10 | 4.0 | D+2.5 |
| 2020 | 10 | 6.3 | D+6.2 |
| 2022 | 7 | 3.0 | R+1.8 |
Do we credit a pollster for fixing its bias? Each cycle, the model re-estimates every pollster's lean from all its earlier polls (walk-forward) and subtracts it before using the poll. We tested weighting recent cycles more — it doesn't help: a pollster's lean in one cycle barely predicts the next (correlation 0.28), so the swings above are mostly noise, and averaging over more history beats chasing the latest cycle. The all-time estimate we use came out within ~0.5% of the best option.