# National Election Pool The **National Election Pool (NEP)** is the consortium of news organizations that commissions the American network exit poll. It was formed in **2003** to replace the **Voter News Service** (VNS), the networks' shared operation. VNS supplied the flawed data behind the wrong 2000 Florida calls, then failed outright on election day 2002, when it said it "was unable to provide reliable exit poll information." Its members voted on January 13, 2003 to dissolve it. The pool's six founding members were [[ABC News]], [[CBS News]], [[CNN]], [[Fox News]], [[NBC News]] and the [[Associated Press]], with Edison/Mitofsky as the polling contractor. AP and Fox stopped working with the pool after 2016 and built their own instrument, [[AP VoteCast]], first used in 2018. That left the four networks. [[Reuters]] is reported to have joined as a distributor in 2020; that rests on one source. The survey work was conducted by [[Edison Research]] until **2025**, when [[SSRS]] acquired Edison. For the 2025 off-year elections AP and Fox joined the networks as partners in a merged survey, **The Voter Poll by SSRS**, which folds [[AP VoteCast]] and the Fox News Voter Analysis into the old exit poll, running online, by telephone, and with a limited in-person component. Keep the NEP distinct from the vote count. The NEP supplies a *survey* describing who voted and why. The *count* is a separate product. Under an October 15, 2025 deal, ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN joined Fox in taking AP's count for 2026 and 2028: in Axios's words, all the broadcast networks and "most of the major cable networks." Each still makes its own calls. The survey does feed those calls, in a limited way: it is used to call lopsided races at poll close, and it can hold a call back (see [[Exit Poll]]). See [[How Election Results Are Transmitted and Reported]], stage 8. ## The 2004 test The pool's first presidential election produced its most famous error. Early numbers leaned toward Kerry. Edison/Mitofsky's January 2005 review traced the lean to Kerry voters agreeing to be interviewed at higher rates than Bush voters, and found no support in the data for claims of fraud. See [[2004 Presidential Election]]. ## See Also - [[Edison Research]] · [[SSRS]] · [[AP VoteCast]] · [[Exit Poll]] - [[How Election Results Are Transmitted and Reported]] - [[ABC News]] · [[CBS News]] · [[NBC News]] · [[CNN]] · [[Fox News]] · [[Reuters]] · [[Associated Press]]