The 2016 Debrief · post-mortem · permanent archive
How did the polling industry do this cycle?
The 2016 industry MAE landed at 6.8pt — graded across 508 historical races with a known outcome — and 461 polls were analyzed across 85 pollsters. Signed bias −4.86pt: pollsters again systematically over-predicted Democrats.
INDUSTRY MAE
6.8pt
vs midterm avg
SIGNED BIAS
−4.86pt
D-leaning
POLLS · POLLSTERS
461
85 firms
RACES SCORED
508
w/ known outcome
Industry mean absolute error · 2002–2016
Per-pollster scorecard · 2016 · sorted by MAE
Signed bias · ±6.5pt
MAE · 0–7.5pt
Biggest-miss races · 2016
| Race | Expected | Actual | Miss | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| us-senate-2016-la | R+2.00 | R+21.31 | -19.3pt | R-margin underestimate |
| us-senate-2016-ok | R+26.00 | R+43.16 | -17.2pt | R-margin underestimate |
| us-governor-2016-nd | R+40.00 | R+57.13 | -17.1pt | R-margin underestimate |
| us-senate-2016-ut | R+27.50 | R+41.09 | -13.6pt | R-margin underestimate |
| us-senate-2016-ak | R+28.50 | R+15.20 | 13.3pt | R-margin overestimate |
| us-senate-2016-nd | R+48.50 | R+61.51 | -13.0pt | R-margin underestimate |
| us-senate-2016-id | R+26.00 | R+38.40 | -12.4pt | R-margin underestimate |
| us-senate-2016-ar | R+13.00 | R+23.60 | -10.6pt | R-margin underestimate |