How to understand exit polls on Election Night

Exit polls are one tool that media organizations use to help explain how a state’s electoral votes might swing, Katie Hawkinson reports

This Election Day, voters will be monitoring their TVs, laptops and phones as results of this year’s presidential and congressional elections pour in.

Ahead of the election results, the latest polls show Kamala Harris and Donald Trump neck-and-neck in their race for the White House. Meanwhile, Democrats are working to gain control of the House of Representatives as Republicans vie for a majority in the Senate.

Exit polls are a key indication of the potential results, as pollsters survey voters after they cast their ballots to determine who they backed and how they feel about certain issues.

Here’s everything you need to know about who conducts them and how to understand them.

Voters cast early ballots in North Carolina on October 17. Exit polls survey early voters, Election Day voters and mail-in-ballot voters to help gauge how an election might swing (Getty Images)

What are exit polls?

Traditionally, exit polls are conducted via in-person interviews with voters outside of polling centers after they’ve cast their ballot. Pollsters are posted outside of voting centers ahead of and on Election Day.

Pollsters also conduct phone and text surveys to reach voters who mailed in their ballots.

These polls are anonymous. When surveyed outside of polling centers, voters write their answers on a piece of paper. When pollsters reach out to mail-in voters by phone or text, personal information isn’t retained.

These surveys typically take about five minutes to complete.

How do news organizations use exit polls to call states?

News organizations use exit polls to give their audiences insight into how people may have voted and how a state’s electoral votes might lean.

Media outlets also use them to project winners in states where the margin is large and a candidate is expected to win in a landslide.

However, as ABC News puts it, “most election projections are made after the polls closed based on actual vote data.”

Who conducts the exit polls?

Four major national news organizations — NBC News, ABC News, CBS News and CNN — participate in the National Election Pool. This means they communally rely on exit polls conducted by Edison Research.

They also abide by a 5pm ET embargo, meaning the results won’t start to be released until then. Members of the National Election pool don’t report exit poll results that are indicative of a state’s winner until all polling centers have closed in that state.

Fox News and the Associated Press were a part of the National Election Pool until 2017. They have since joined the Associated Press’s VoteCast, which the outlet describes as an “extensive survey of both voters and nonvoters that aims to tell the story behind election results.”

The Associated Press’s VoteCast is not the same as an exit poll, because it doesn’t include interviews outside of polling centers. Instead, they use mail, phone and online tools to interview voters.

Exit polls reach far more people than the average pre-Election-Day poll, which typically only includes 1,000-2,000 people.

Edison Research reached more than 100,000 voters in the 2020 general election. Meanwhile, AP VoteCast expects to interview around 119,000 people this year.

What questions are on exit polls?

Pollsters will ask voters who they cast their ballot for and their feelings on various key issues, such as the economy, inflation or abortion.

Polls conducted by the National Election Pool and the Associated Press’s VoteCast will also include questions about voters’ demographic information.

This is used to track how different demographics are voting and to make sure the poll is representative of the population (referred to as weighing the poll).