Using Exit Polling to Inform Civic Engagement

Allan McCutcheon, Univ. of Nebraska-Lincoln

Joe Lenski, Edison Research

The National Election Pool (NEP)

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)

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

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

2008 Exit Poll Questionnaire

Sampling

• Research sample

Research Sample

Sampling

• Research sample

• “Quick count” sampleResearch Sample

Quick CountSample

Sampling

• Research sample

• “Quick count” sample

• Exit poll sample Research Sample

Quick CountSample

Exit PollSample

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

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

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

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

Education Gap in Voting2008 National Election Pool

CIRCLE Report, 2009

Less than HS HS Diploma Some College College Degree Post Graduate0

10

20

30

40

% of Population

% of voters

Information for Policy Makers

» Source: Bautista et al., forthcoming

.38

.44

.74

.67

Anglo Voters Hispanic Voters

Some College College Graduateor less or more

Some College College Graduateor less or more

*p<.05

0.2

.4.6

.81

Figure 2. Predicted Probability of Voting Obama:Interaction of Race by Education

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?

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