Marquette University Law School
Graded against the actual result across 14 races (from 37 polls, through 2024).
Head-to-head vs VotePredictor Elections
The fair, apples-to-apples test: on the 14 races Marquette University Law School actually polled, how its final poll's margin compared to what VotePredictor Elections predicted for those same races.
| Model | Avg miss (pts) | Called right |
|---|---|---|
| Marquette University Law School | 2.46 | 64% |
| VotePredictor Elections | 2.94 | 71% |
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 Marquette University Law School 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 WI President | D+1.5 | R+0.8 | 2.3 | ✗ |
| 2024 WI Senate | D+2.0 | D+0.9 | 1.1 | ✓ |
| 2022 WI Governor | EVEN | D+3.4 | 3.4 | ✗ |
| 2022 WI Senate | R+2.0 | R+1.0 | 1.0 | ✓ |
| 2020 US President | D+10.0 | D+4.4 | 5.6 | ✓ |
| 2020 WI President | D+5.0 | D+0.6 | 4.4 | ✓ |
| 2018 WI Governor | EVEN | D+1.1 | 1.1 | ✗ |
| 2018 WI Senate | D+11.0 | D+10.8 | 0.2 | ✓ |
| 2016 WI President | D+6.0 | R+0.8 | 6.8 | ✗ |
| 2016 WI Senate | D+1.0 | R+3.4 | 4.4 | ✗ |
| 2014 WI Governor | R+7.0 | R+5.7 | 1.3 | ✓ |
| 2012 WI Governor | R+7.0 | R+6.8 | 0.2 | ✓ |
| 2012 WI President | D+8.0 | D+6.8 | 1.2 | ✓ |
| 2012 WI Senate | D+4.0 | D+5.5 | 1.5 | ✓ |
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 | 13 | 2.21 | -2.86 | 62% |
| 3–6 wk | 14 | 3.79 | -1.95 | 64% |
| 6–9 wk | 10 | 3.55 | -2.60 | 80% |
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 | 10 | 3.2 | D+0.1 |
| 2014 | 4 | 2.6 | D+1.9 |
| 2016 | 6 | 6.1 | D+6.1 |
| 2018 | 6 | 1.4 | D+0.0 |
| 2020 | 3 | 4.8 | D+4.8 |
| 2022 | 6 | 2.0 | R+2.0 |
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.