national civic summit - allan mccutcheon and joe lenski
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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
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