# Exit Poll An **exit poll** is a survey of voters conducted at or around the moment of voting, designed to describe the composition of the electorate — who voted, how different groups voted, and which issues they say drove the decision. It is the instrument behind every election-night statement about "the suburban vote" or "voters under 30." Two distinctions carry the weight: - **An exit poll is not a count.** It is a sample survey, subject to sampling and coverage error, and it never adds a vote to anyone's total. It does play a part in **projections**, though. NBC's decision desk says that "early on election night, the Decision Desk uses exit poll data to determine whether it can project uncompetitive races." AP uses [[AP VoteCast]] the same way: it calls a lopsided race at poll close only if the survey confirms the expected result. Competitive races are called from the counted vote. (Corrected 2026-10-06; this page used to say exit polls have no role in projections.) - **The polling-place interview is no longer the method.** With a large share of Americans voting early or by mail, an interview conducted outside a polling place on election day cannot reach most voters. The two surviving instruments are built around that: [[AP VoteCast]], which samples registered voters from state voter files by phone and online, and The Voter Poll by [[SSRS]], the [[National Election Pool]] product that succeeded [[Edison Research]]'s precinct-based design and now runs mixed-mode. ## When the survey failed - **2000 and 2002: the Voter News Service.** The networks' shared exit-poll and vote-count operation, the Voter News Service, supplied the flawed data behind the wrong Florida calls in 2000. On election day 2002, hours before polls closed, it said it "was unable to provide reliable exit poll information." The members (ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC and AP) voted on **January 13, 2003** to dissolve it. The [[National Election Pool]] replaced it. See [[2000 Presidential Election]]. - **2004: the Kerry skew.** Early exit-poll numbers leaned toward John Kerry and fed claims that the count had been rigged. The pool's contractors, Edison and Mitofsky, reported on January 19, 2005 that the cause was "Kerry voters participating in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters." They found that the polls "do not support the allegations of fraud," with no pattern by equipment type. See [[2004 Presidential Election]]. The lesson of both: a survey's error is a survey's error. It is not evidence about the count, and it cannot be fixed by recounting. In this vault the exit poll appears mainly to be set aside: it runs alongside the election-night count and is routinely mistaken for it. See stage 8 of [[How Election Results Are Transmitted and Reported]]. ## See Also - [[AP VoteCast]] · [[National Election Pool]] · [[Edison Research]] · [[SSRS]] - [[How Election Results Are Transmitted and Reported]] · [[How a Ballot Is Counted]] - [[Associated Press]]