McLaughlin & Associates
Graded against the actual result across 63 races (from 78 polls, through 2024).
Head-to-head vs VotePredictor Elections
The fair, apples-to-apples test: on the 54 races McLaughlin & Associates actually polled, how its final poll's margin compared to what VotePredictor Elections predicted for those same races.
| Model | Avg miss (pts) | Called right |
|---|---|---|
| McLaughlin & Associates | 8.49 | 65% |
| VotePredictor Elections | 4.57 | 85% |
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 (63)
Each race McLaughlin & Associates 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 wk | 5 | 4.63 | +0.39 | 80% |
| 1–3 wk | 20 | 8.13 | +3.07 | 55% |
| 3–6 wk | 38 | 7.66 | +1.96 | 74% |
| 6–9 wk | 15 | 9.49 | +3.35 | 47% |
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) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 6 | 5.0 | R+4.5 |
| 2004 | 6 | 1.3 | R+0.8 |
| 2006 | 3 | 12.4 | R+12.4 |
| 2008 | 6 | 11.3 | R+1.7 |
| 2010 | 5 | 6.5 | R+2.8 |
| 2012 | 26 | 7.9 | R+7.6 |
| 2013 | 3 | 6.9 | R+6.9 |
| 2014 | 3 | 4.7 | D+3.9 |
| 2016 | 5 | 7.5 | D+2.9 |
| 2018 | 6 | 12.8 | R+12.8 |
| 2022 | 3 | 4.3 | R+4.3 |
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.