1. Using Exit Polling to Inform Civic
Engagem ent
Allan McCutcheon, Univ. of Nebraska-Lincoln
Joe Lenski, Edison Research

2. The National Election Pool (NEP)

3. Brief History of Exit Polls
• By early 1960’s, major networks identified
“key” or “tag” precincts to “call” elections
• CBS used exit polls in the 1967 Kentucky
gubernatorial contest
• By late 1970’s/early 1980’s CBS, NBC,
ABC all used exit polling
• Early 1990’s Voter News Service (VNS)
• 2003-present National Election Pool
(NEP)

4. Purpose of Exit Polls
• Projection: provide evidence regarding
prior expectations (pre-election polls)
• Context: provide an interpretation the
election outcome (public/media)
• To provide transparency in electoral
outcomes
• To provide information for scholars and
policy makers

5. Exit Poll Methodology
• Actual voters
– Not “eligible” voters
– Not “likely” voters
• About behavior
– Immediate – not recall/ memory issues
• Purpose is transparent to respondents
– Purpose is immediately understood

6. 2008 Exit Poll Questionnaire

7. Sampling
• Research sample
Research Sample

8. Sampling
• Research sample
• “Quick count” sample
Research Sample
Quick Count
Sample

9. Sampling
• Research sample
• “Quick count” sample
• Exit poll sample Research Sample
Quick Count
Sample
Exit Poll
Sample

10. Forecasting and Election Projection
• Exit polls: first data in on election day
– Helps us understand probable direction of
election day
– Helps us understand the thinking of the voters
• Real vote counts
– “Quick counts” soon after polls close
– Actual vote tallies: often quite late in evening

11. Information for the Public
• Exit polls promote transparency, trust, and a
sense of civic engagement for electorate
• Exit polls enable people in the media to provide
explanations that make sense
• Exit polls are a feature of open democracies
– Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic,
Denmark, England, Finland, France,
Germany,Ireland, Macedonia, Mexico, Netherlands,
Norway, Philippines, Portugal, Poland, Romania,
Russia, South Korea, Spain, United States, and more

12. Information for Scholars
• Exit poll data are released to major
academic archives for research analysis
• Much has been learned about who votes,
why they vote, and why they voted the
way they did
• Much has been learned about the
methodology of exit polling

13. Information for Policy Makers
• Who votes and, importantly, who does not
• Use appears to be fairly new/recent
– Center for Information & Research on
Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), Tufts
• Exit polls can inform us about which
groups are under-represented at the polls
• 2008: younger people better represented
than in the past, lower educated people
less well represented

14. Education Gap in Voting
2008 National Election Pool
40
30
% of Population
20 % of voters
10
0
Less than HS HS Diploma Some College College Degree Post Graduate
CIRCLE Report, 2009

15. Information for Policy Makers
Figure 2. Predicted Probability of Voting Obama:
Interaction of Race by Education
Anglo Voters Hispanic Voters
1
Some College College Graduate Some College College Graduate
or less or more or less or more
.8
.74
.67
.6
*p<.05
.44
.38
.4
.2
0
» Source: Bautista et al., forthcoming

16. Civic and Social Engagement
• Declining civic engagement
– Voting and interest
– Life cycle or cohort?
• Is this changing?
• Declining social engagement
– “Bowling alone,” Robert Putnam
– Declining volunteerism and participation
• Uniformly distributed across population?

17. Conclusions
• Exit polls are a relatively recent “invention”
• Created to help forecast elections and
interpret the observed voting patterns
• Scholars now use them to help better
understand the electorate
• Recently, exit poll data has used to help
policy makers and civic organizers better
understand who does, and does not,
participate