America First Insight Pollster Scorecard

The America First Insight (AFI) Pollster Scorecard is designed to offer a transparent evaluation of pollsters based on their accuracy and impartiality. This scorecard utilizes three key metrics to grade each pollster:

• Average Miss: This metric calculates how far off, on average, a pollster's predictions were from actual election outcomes. It employs a weighted average derived from polls conducted within the 90 days leading up to the elections in 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024. The weighting considers both the proximity to election day and the competitiveness of the polled race.
• Average Bias: Using the same methodology as the Average Miss, this metric assesses whether a pollster consistently overstates support for one political party over another.
• Percentage of Polls Within Three Points: This measures the consistency of a pollster's predictions. A poll within three percentage points of the actual result is considered accurate.

Scoring Methodology

To compute the overall score, these metrics are combined into a weighted average. The Average Miss and Average Bias are given greater weight due to their direct impact on poll reliability and integrity.

Polling Aggregate Scoring

Using a near identical method to normal pollster scoring, the main difference in aggregate scoring is that we lessen the values of Average Misses and Average Biases, and we made the margins for a "good" poll more stringent, decreasing a good poll from within 3 points to within 1.5 points.