Opinion Research Associates
Graded against the actual result across 10 races (from 21 polls, through 2014).
Every race (10)
Each race Opinion Research 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.
| Race | Their call | Result | Miss | Call |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 AR Governor | D+4.0 | R+13.9 | 17.9 | ✗ |
| 2014 AR Senate | D+2.0 | R+17.1 | 19.1 | ✗ |
| 2006 AR Governor | D+18.0 | D+14.9 | 3.1 | ✓ |
| 2004 AR President | EVEN | R+9.8 | 9.8 | ✗ |
| 2004 AR Senate | D+36.0 | D+11.8 | 24.2 | ✓ |
| 2002 AR Governor | R+6.0 | R+6.1 | 0.1 | ✓ |
| 2002 AR-4 House | D+15.0 | D+21.1 | 6.1 | ✓ |
| 2002 AR Senate | D+8.0 | D+7.8 | 0.2 | ✓ |
| 2000 AR-4 House | EVEN | D+1.9 | 1.9 | ✗ |
| 2000 AR President | EVEN | R+5.4 | 5.4 | ✗ |
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 | 12 | 7.64 | +2.57 | 58% |
| 3–6 wk | 5 | 11.60 | +5.86 | 60% |
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) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | 7 | 2.6 | R+0.8 |
| 2004 | 4 | 12.7 | D+12.7 |
| 2014 | 6 | 18.2 | D+18.2 |
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.