Peter Hajek: Current Polls, Historical Accuracy, and Statistical Deviations

The PolitPro Election Trend serves as the benchmark, using a time-weighted average of all current surveys. A poll value is flagged if it deviates by more than one percentage point from this trend.

Accuracy indicates how closely pre-election polls aligned with actual election results. We compare final surveys from various institutes with official outcomes. To do this, we calculate the average deviation across all parties that received at least 3% of the vote. Most election polls have a standard margin of error of 2-3 percentage points. We categorize average deviations as follows: up to 1 percentage point is "very good" (green); up to 2 points is "good" (yellow); up to 3 points is "acceptable" (orange), though this may indicate significant outliers for specific parties. Deviations exceeding 3 percentage points suggest a lack of predictive power and are rated "poor" (red).