Maine People's Resource Center
Graded against the actual result across 14 races (from 29 polls, through 2016).
Head-to-head vs VotePredictor Elections
The fair, apples-to-apples test: on the 14 races Maine People's Resource Center actually polled, how its final poll's margin compared to what VotePredictor Elections predicted for those same races.
| Model | Avg miss (pts) | Called right |
|---|---|---|
| Maine People's Resource Center | 6.20 | 93% |
| VotePredictor Elections | 4.95 | 100% |
VotePredictor Elections 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 (14)
Each race Maine People's Resource Center 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.
| Race | Their call | Result | Miss | Call |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 M1 President | D+11.5 | D+14.8 | 3.3 | ✓ |
| 2016 M2 President | R+3.4 | R+10.3 | 6.9 | ✓ |
| 2016 ME President | D+5.0 | D+3.0 | 2.0 | ✓ |
| 2014 ME Governor | D+0.3 | R+4.8 | 5.1 | ✗ |
| 2014 ME-1 House | D+25.3 | D+29.8 | 4.5 | ✓ |
| 2014 ME-2 House | R+0.9 | R+5.2 | 4.3 | ✓ |
| 2014 ME Senate | R+20.1 | R+37.0 | 16.9 | ✓ |
| 2012 ME-1 House | D+28.0 | D+29.6 | 1.6 | ✓ |
| 2012 ME-2 House | D+4.0 | D+16.4 | 12.4 | ✓ |
| 2012 M1 President | D+17.7 | D+21.4 | 3.7 | ✓ |
| 2012 M2 President | D+4.0 | D+8.6 | 4.6 | ✓ |
| 2012 ME President | D+11.1 | D+15.3 | 4.2 | ✓ |
| 2012 ME Senate | R+23.3 | R+17.5 | 5.8 | ✓ |
| 2010 ME Governor | R+15.0 | R+26.7 | 11.7 | ✓ |
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 wk | 11 | 6.78 | +2.50 | 91% |
| 3–6 wk | 6 | 5.76 | +0.02 | 83% |
| 6–9 wk | 9 | 2.45 | -3.70 | 100% |
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) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 12 | 3.9 | R+2.0 |
| 2014 | 4 | 7.7 | D+5.5 |
| 2016 | 12 | 4.5 | D+1.9 |
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.