Head-to-head vs the VotePredictor model
The fair, apples-to-apples test: on the 50 races SSRS 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 |
|---|---|---|
| SSRS | 4.36 | 72% |
| VotePredictor | 3.19 | 80% |
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 (51)
Each race SSRS 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1–3 wk | 40 | 4.82 | -0.25 | 60% |
| 3–6 wk | 24 | 4.07 | -1.67 | 79% |
| 6–9 wk | 14 | 6.22 | +0.07 | 79% |
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 | 9 | 3.5 | D+0.5 |
| 2004 | 6 | 2.9 | R+1.9 |
| 2018 | 22 | 6.2 | D+4.8 |
| 2020 | 16 | 6.8 | D+6.8 |
| 2022 | 10 | 1.5 | R+0.3 |
| 2024 | 15 | 3.6 | D+3.6 |
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.