YouGov
Graded against the actual result across 439 races (from 775 polls, through 2025).
Head-to-head vs the VotePredictor model
The fair, apples-to-apples test: on the 433 races YouGov 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 |
|---|---|---|
| YouGov | 5.11 | 86% |
| VotePredictor | 3.55 | 92% |
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 (433)
Each race YouGov 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 | 108 | 4.08 | -0.20 | 86% |
| 1–3 wk | 370 | 5.26 | +0.19 | 85% |
| 3–6 wk | 209 | 4.76 | -0.98 | 81% |
| 6–9 wk | 88 | 4.89 | -1.26 | 91% |
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) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | 9 | 3.2 | D+3.2 |
| 2006 | 43 | 5.0 | D+0.1 |
| 2008 | 97 | 5.0 | R+1.6 |
| 2010 | 36 | 4.1 | R+1.6 |
| 2012 | 162 | 4.4 | R+2.7 |
| 2014 | 160 | 6.0 | D+3.8 |
| 2016 | 111 | 5.6 | D+3.1 |
| 2018 | 16 | 2.5 | R+0.1 |
| 2020 | 72 | 4.6 | D+4.3 |
| 2022 | 26 | 2.9 | D+0.5 |
| 2024 | 36 | 4.7 | D+4.7 |
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.