The 2022 Debrief · post-mortem · permanent archive
How did the polling industry do this cycle?
The 2022 industry MAE landed at 4.6pt — graded across 492 historical races with a known outcome — and 459 polls were analyzed across 102 pollsters. Signed bias +0.54pt: pollsters again systematically over-predicted Republicans.
INDUSTRY MAE
4.6pt
vs midterm avg
SIGNED BIAS
+0.54pt
R-leaning
POLLS · POLLSTERS
459
102 firms
RACES SCORED
492
w/ known outcome
Industry mean absolute error · 2002–2022
PoliAgg model · self-grade · 2022
How did our own production model do this cycle? The model issues one prediction per race; the polling industry above is averaged across many polls per race. Metrics are not directly comparable but published side-by-side for transparency.
Mean error per race
7.91pp
poliagg-v16 ensemble vs final margin
Call accuracy
94.3%
fraction with right winner called
Races graded
492
outcomes used in the grade
Per-pollster scorecard · 2022 · sorted by MAE
Signed bias · ±4.2pt
MAE · 0–4.2pt
Biggest-miss races · 2022
| Race | Expected | Actual | Miss | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| us-senate-special-2022-ok | R+11.50 | R+26.53 | -15.0pt | R-margin underestimate |
| us-senate-2022-ok | R+18.00 | R+32.20 | -14.2pt | R-margin underestimate |
| us-governor-2022-ar | R+14.50 | R+27.76 | -13.3pt | R-margin underestimate |
| us-governor-2022-ok | R+2.00 | R+13.66 | -11.7pt | R-margin underestimate |
| us-senate-2022-wa | D+4.50 | D+14.52 | 10.0pt | D-margin underestimate |
| us-senate-2022-fl | R+7.50 | R+16.41 | -8.9pt | R-margin underestimate |
| us-governor-2022-fl | R+11.50 | R+19.40 | -7.9pt | R-margin underestimate |
| us-governor-2022-co | D+12.00 | D+19.35 | 7.3pt | D-margin underestimate |