# The Voter Poll **The Voter Poll** (formally *The Voter Poll by SSRS*) is the survey of American voters that the major U.S. news organizations use on election night to say who voted and why. [[SSRS]] runs it for [[ABC News]], the [[Associated Press]], [[CBS News]], [[CNN]], [[Fox News]], [[MSNBC]] (now called MS NOW) and [[NBC News]]. It is the successor to the [[Exit Poll]], but in 2026 about three in four of its interviews were done *before* Election Day, by phone and online, not outside a polling place. The same survey goes by different names on different channels. CNN calls it the "CNN Voter Poll." CBS and NBC still label their results "exit polls." **Why it matters:** In the 2026 midterms, for the first time since 2016, every major network describes the electorate from one survey and counts the vote from one source (the AP). From 2018 through 2024 there were two separate surveys, the networks' exit poll and [[AP VoteCast]], built on different methods. Now there is one, so there is no independent second estimate to check it against on the night. ## Where it came from - **2003–2016.** The networks and the AP shared one exit poll through the [[National Election Pool]], conducted by [[Edison Research]]. - **2017–2024.** The AP and Fox left the pool and built [[AP VoteCast]], a large survey of registered voters done by phone and online in the days before the election. ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC kept the Edison exit poll. - **October 15, 2025.** SSRS bought Edison Research. - **October 28, 2025.** SSRS launched The Voter Poll, which it says "merges the methodologies of the Edison/NEP Exit Poll and AP VoteCast/FOX News Voter Analysis," with ABC, AP, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC as partners. Its first use was the November 2025 elections in New York City, Virginia, New Jersey and California. - **2026.** MS NOW joined, making seven partners. The AP's announcement of its 2026 midterm plans describes its survey only as The Voter Poll. ## How the 2026 survey works The figures below come from SSRS's published methods statement and CNN's explainer, which agree on the headline numbers. | | 2026 midterms | |---|---| | Voters interviewed | About 100,000 | | Before Election Day | About 76,000 registered voters, online and by phone, October 19 to November 3 (CNN rounds this to "nearly 80,000") | | How they were found | A random sample of the voter file, invited by postcard, text, email or phone call, plus members of two online panels (the SSRS Opinion Panel and the Verasight Verified Panel). Every respondent is matched to the voter rolls | | On Election Day | Paper questionnaires handed to randomly chosen voters as they leave randomly chosen polling places, about 30 per state, in 15 states: Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. CNN puts this part at about 22,000 interviews | | Languages | English and Spanish | | Margin of error | Plus or minus 0.6 points nationally. State figures range from 1.9 points (Texas) to 8.3 points (North Dakota) | | State results | Samples in all 50 states (not the District of Columbia), with results reported in the 45 states that have a Senate or governor's race | **Checking that people actually voted.** A pre-election respondent who hadn't voted yet is contacted again, from the evening before Election Day until the polls close, and asked to confirm that they voted and whether they changed their mind. ## Why the numbers move on election night - **Nothing that could show who is winning a race comes out before the polls close.** - **The mix of voters is estimated, then corrected.** SSRS weights its early, mail and Election Day respondents to its estimate of how each state's voters split among those ways of voting. In the 17 states with the largest samples it also calibrates to modeled Senate and governor vote estimates. - **The final numbers are reweighted to the count.** Once votes are counted, the results are adjusted to match each state's actual outcome. CNN says plainly that "the results of the survey will change throughout the night." So a 6 p.m. figure such as "voters under 30 split 60–40" is a provisional estimate, and the version published the next day may differ. That adjustment is routine and documented in advance. A shift between early-evening and final survey numbers is not evidence that anything happened to the count. **A caveat on the margin of error.** Part of the sample comes from online panels that are not fully random. SSRS itself notes that there is no industry-agreed way to calculate sampling error for that kind of mixed sample, so its margins are estimates. Subgroups (one age group in one state, say) carry much larger error than the headline figure. ## What it is not - **It is not the vote count.** Since an October 2025 deal, ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC take their vote counts from the AP, as Fox already did. The count and the survey are separate products on separate paths: see [[How Election Results Are Transmitted and Reported]]. - **It is not the race call.** Each network runs its own decision desk. Survey data has been used to call lopsided races the moment polls close, and to hold back such a call when the survey looks off, but competitive races are called from the counted vote (see [[Exit Poll]] and [[AP VoteCast]]). ## Why it's on the map Election-night surveys are a recurring raw material for claims that an election was stolen. The template is the [[2004 Presidential Election]], when early exit-poll numbers leaned toward John Kerry and were later traced to Kerry voters being more willing to be interviewed, not to any problem with the count (see [[Election Conspiracy Theories]]). The 2026 design is less exposed to that particular error, because most interviews come from voter-file samples, not polling-place doors. But it concentrates every network's picture of the electorate in one firm's survey, and it builds in reweighting to the final count. That reweighting is routine survey practice, and it is also easy to misread as "the numbers were changed." ## Connections - [[Exit Poll]] · [[AP VoteCast]] · [[National Election Pool]] - [[SSRS]] · [[Edison Research]] - [[Associated Press]] · [[ABC News]] · [[CBS News]] · [[CNN]] · [[Fox News]] · [[MSNBC]] · [[NBC News]] · [[Decision Desk HQ]] - [[How Election Results Are Transmitted and Reported]] - [[2026 Midterm Elections]] · [[2026 Midterms Live - Election Results War Room]]