How Do Exit Polls Work?

Exit polls are a useful way to predict election results, as well as gather demographic information about the voters and the votes that they cast. Exit polls were created by Warren Mitofsky, a political pollster who worked for CBS News from 1967 to 1990. Polls remain an important aspect of elections. There are some problems with these polls based on the way they work and are reported.

The individuals administering the exit poll wait outside the voting booths in randomly chosen locations. This is to randomize the data that they are collecting.

The interviewers do not question every voter that leaves the booths, but rather they question voters at specified intervals. For example, an interviewer might question every fifth voter. This is again done to randomize data.

The voters that agree to participate fill out a questionnaire. The questionnaire asks who the voter voted for, but it also asks other questions as well. The questionnaire usually inquires about the voter’s race, age, gender, income level, and their education level. Some questionnaires might also ask about which election issues influenced his or her vote.

For any voter that refused to participate in the poll, the interviewer marks down the approximate demographical information about that voter. This is done to record that the poll had a varied group of individuals who participated. 

Who Collects the Exit Polls and Why

Exit polls are collected primarily by private research companies. News channels frequently use exit polls to gauge how an election is turning out, and to inform viewers if a candidate appears to be in the lead. Private research corporations sometimes collect exit polls for demographic reasons, or for research purposes.

Exit polls are also collected to gauge if election fraud has been committed. For example, if exit polls reveal that the election has been split between two candidates, and the election results report that one candidate won by ninety eight percent, that suggests that election fraud has been committed.

In this way, exit polls have been useful throughout history as a way to discover fraud. In two particular situations, the Venezuelan referendum in 2004 and the presidential election in the Ukraine in 2004, exit polls revealed election fraud.

Accuracy of Exit Polls

Exit polls can suffer from sampling errors. Sampling errors means that the poll has collected information from a group of people that does not accurately reflect the voting group as a whole. For example, information collected from one town might overwhelmingly show one candidate in the lead. However, this town might simply be quite conservative or quite liberal. Thus, the results from this town don’t reflect the results from the country (or even state) as a whole.

Criticisms About Exit Polls

Some individuals believe that exit polls and the reporting of results from exit polls might actually influence voters. For example, in the United States, the results of exit polls are often reported around eight in the evening (Eastern Time), if not earlier.

This means that when the exit polls are reported, voting booths are still open on the west coast. If it appears that a candidate is overwhelmingly the favorite, individuals may feel it is not worthwhile to vote. This might mean that the election results don’t reflect the country’s preference as a whole.