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Anelection exit poll is apoll of voters taken immediately after they have exited thepolling stations. A similar poll conducted before actual voters have voted is called anentrance poll. Pollsters – usually private companies working fornewspapers orbroadcasters – conduct exit polls to gain an early indication as to how an election has turned out, as in many elections the actual result may take many hours to count.
There are different views on who invented the exit poll.Marcel van Dam, Dutch sociologist and former politician, says he was the inventor, by being the first to implement one during the Dutch legislative elections on 15 February 1967.[1] Other sources sayWarren Mitofsky, an American pollster, was the first. ForCBS News, he devised an exit poll in the Kentucky gubernatorial election in November that same year.[2][3] Notwithstanding this, the mention of the first exit polls date back to the 1940s when such a poll was held in Denver, Colorado.[4][failed verification]
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Exit polls are also used to collectdemographic data about voters and to find out why they voted as they did. Since actual votes are cast anonymously, polling is the only way of collecting this information.
Exit polls have historically and throughout the world been used as acheck against, and rough indicator of, the degree ofelection fraud. Some examples of this include the2004 Venezuelan recall referendum, and the2004 Ukrainian presidential election.
They are used to command amandate as well as to determine whether or not a particularpolitical campaign was successful or not.
The distribution of votes is not even across different polling stations and also varies at different times of day. As a result, a single exit poll may give an imperfect picture of the national vote. Instead, some exit polls calculateswing andturnout. Pollsters return to the same polling stations at the same times at each election, and by comparing the results with previous exit polls they can calculate how the distribution of votes has changed in that constituency. This swing is then applied to other similar constituencies, allowing an estimate of how national voting patterns have changed. The polling locations are chosen to cover the entire gamut of society and where possible, to include especially criticalmarginal seats.[5][6][7] Data is presented in one of three ways, either as atable, graph or written interpretation.[8]
The US exit polls have long been conducted by Edison Research for theNational Election Pool of media organizations, interviewing a sample of voters as they leave a polling place. These pollsters choose precincts whose mix of voters is representative of the broader area. These voters may not be typical. For example, minority voters in a mixed precinct may vote at different rates and for different candidates than minority voters in a mostly minority precinct.[9] TheAssociated Press since 2018 has switched tophone polling, which does not need to be grouped by precinct. They start calling a random sample of voters until they vote, to covermailed ballots,early voting, and election-day voting.[9]
Like all opinion polls, exit polls by nature do include amargin of error. A famous example of exit poll error occurred in the1992 UK General Election when two exit polls predicted ahung parliament. The actual vote revealed thatConservative Party government underJohn Major held their position, though with a significantly reduced majority. Investigations into this failure identified a number of causes including differential response rates (theShy Tory Factor), the use of inadequate demographic data and poor choice of sampling points.[10][11]
Another example of this was the2024 Indian general election, in which after the voting ended, exit polls showed that the incumbentBharatiya Janata Party–NDA government ofNarendra Modi would win 350 to 370 seats in theParliament of India and thus a landslide, but the actual results showed the opposition's strong performance and led to the BJP failing to gain a majority on its own.
As exit polls require a baseline to compare swing against, they are not reliable for one-off votes such as theScottish independence referendum or theUK EU membership referendum.[5][6] Because exit polls can't reach people who voted bypostal ballot or another form ofabsentee voting, they may be biased towards certain demographics and miss swings that only occur among absentee voters.[7] For example, in the May round of the2016 Austrian presidential election, exit polls correctly pointed to a narrow lead forNorbert Hofer among those who voted at a polling station.[12] However, the postal votes (which made up about 12% of the total vote)[13] were slightly but definitively in favour of his rivalAlexander Van der Bellen, and ultimately gave Van der Bellen victory. This could be considered a non-U.S. example ofthe phenomenon known as "blue shift" in the U.S.
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In the United States, theNational Election Pool (NEP), conducts a joint election exit poll. As of 2018, the NEP members areABC,CBS,CNN, andNBC (formerly also includedAP andFox News). Since 2004 this exit poll has been conducted for the NEP by Edison Media Research. Edison uses probability-based sampling.[14] In 2020, in-person interviews on Election Day were conducted at a random sample of 115 polling locations nationwide among 7,774 Election Day voters. The results also include 4,919 telephone interviews with early and absentee voters.[15]
The release of exit poll data in the United States is controlled. During the2012 elections, protocols to quarantine the release of data were put in place.[16]
In Egypt, the Egyptian Center for Public Opinion Research conducted two exit polls in 2014 for theconstitutional referendum andpresidential election.
In South Korea, exit polls have been conducted by Kantar Public forKBS,SBS, andMBC.[17]
In India, exit polls are conducted by private news broadcasting channels and newspaper agencies such asThe Times Group,CVoter,India Today, etc. India being the largest democracy in the world has many agencies publishing exit polls which roughly predict the outcome of the elections.[18]
In Singapore, where exit polls are banned due to privacy issues,[19][20] a variant of the exit poll, dubbedsample counts, are used instead and have been implemented in every election since2015.[21][22]
Widespread criticism of exit polling has occurred in cases, especially in theUnited States, where exit poll results have appeared and/or have provided a basis for projecting winners before all real polls have closed, thereby possibly influencing election results. States have tried and failed to restrict exit polling; however, it is protected by the First Amendment.[23] In the1980 US presidential election, NBC predicted a victory for Ronald Reagan at 8:15 pm EST, based on exit polls of 20,000 voters. It was 5:15 pm on the West Coast, and the polls were still open. There was speculation that voters stayed away after hearing the results.[24] Thereafter, television networks have voluntarily adopted the policy of not projecting any victor within a state until all polls have closed for that state.[25] In the2000 US presidential election it was alleged that media organizations released exit poll results forFlorida before the polls closed in the Republican-leaning counties of thepanhandle, as part of the westernmost area of the state is one hour behind the main peninsula. A study by economistJohn Lott found an "unusual" decline in Panhandle voter turnout compared to previous elections, and that the networks' early call of Florida for DemocratAl Gore may have depressed Republican turnout in other states where the polls remained open.[26]
Some countries, including the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Germany, India and Singapore, have made it a criminal offence to release exit poll figures before all polling stations have closed.[27][28]
In some instances, problems with exit polls have encouraged polling groups to pool data in hopes of increased accuracy. This proved successful during the2005 UK general election, when theBBC andITV merged their data to show an exit poll givingLabour a majority of 66 seats, which turned out to be the exact figure. This method was also successful in the2007 Australian federal election, where the collaboration ofSky News,Seven Network and Auspoll provided an almost exact 53 per centtwo party-preferred victory toLabor over the rulingCoalition.
There was a widespread controversy during the2014 Indian general election when theElection Commission of India barred media organisations from displaying exit poll results until the votes had been counted. This was followed by a strong protest from the media which caused the Election Commission to withdraw its statement and confirm that the exit polls could be shown at 6:30 PM on 12 May after the last vote was cast. Since then exit polls have been prohibited in India while the polls are open, only post-poll opinion surveys are allowed.
The results...clearly show an unusual drop-off in Republican turnout in Florida's 10 western Panhandle counties in 2000.
