OnMessage Inc.
Graded against the actual result across 50 races (from 61 polls, through 2024).
Head-to-head vs the VotePredictor model
The fair, apples-to-apples test: on the 46 races OnMessage Inc. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| OnMessage Inc. | 5.00 | 78% |
| VotePredictor | 3.77 | 89% |
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 (49)
Each race OnMessage Inc. 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 | 9 | 2.08 | -2.20 | 56% |
| 1–3 wk | 19 | 4.02 | -1.05 | 79% |
| 3–6 wk | 23 | 6.00 | +0.26 | 70% |
| 6–9 wk | 10 | 6.20 | +0.05 | 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) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | 3 | 10.2 | R+10.2 |
| 2010 | 8 | 5.0 | D+0.5 |
| 2012 | 6 | 11.0 | R+11.0 |
| 2018 | 4 | 4.8 | R+4.8 |
| 2020 | 6 | 7.0 | R+1.9 |
| 2022 | 8 | 6.2 | R+4.7 |
| 2024 | 20 | 1.2 | D+0.1 |
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.