Rasmussen Reports
Graded against the actual result across 128 races (from 260 polls, through 2024).
Head-to-head vs the VotePredictor model
The fair, apples-to-apples test: on the 126 races Rasmussen Reports 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Rasmussen Reports | 4.40 | 77% |
| VotePredictor | 3.33 | 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 (126)
Each race Rasmussen Reports 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 | 31 | 4.23 | -0.05 | 68% |
| 1–3 wk | 118 | 4.55 | -0.52 | 68% |
| 3–6 wk | 72 | 4.72 | -1.02 | 89% |
| 6–9 wk | 39 | 5.32 | -0.83 | 62% |
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 | 36 | 3.7 | R+3.3 |
| 2013 | 9 | 5.0 | D+4.1 |
| 2014 | 77 | 5.9 | D+2.9 |
| 2016 | 68 | 5.1 | D+3.3 |
| 2018 | 7 | 2.5 | D+0.9 |
| 2020 | 29 | 3.0 | D+0.9 |
| 2022 | 6 | 5.4 | R+5.4 |
| 2024 | 25 | 2.8 | D+0.4 |
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.