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It seems to me that most people outside the fields of public opinion, polling, and electoral politics are not terribly cognizant of exit polls. This has become all too evident on those occasions when I have tried to impress my singularly unimpressable relatives by saying things like, “I know Warren Mitofsky!” a statement that generally produces a perplexed silence, followed by, “...the famous exit poll guy”; and then, “You know how on election night they keep telling you who is going to win…?” Of course, by that time the conversation has lost all momentum, and we’re back to criticizing the other relatives. I don’t know how many other public opinion followers find themselves facing blank expressions upon bringing up exit polls during holiday dinners, but I suspect it’s quite a few.
Actually, with so much controversy surrounding exit polling these days, it probably wouldn’t hurt anybody—practitioner, professor, politician, student, uncle, or cousin—to obtain or be able to point others to a good, basic grounding in the subject. At least, Public Opinion Pros thinks so, and that’s why we are devoting this issue solely to exit polls, and what they can tell us.
At the heart of our issue is Mark Lindeman and Rick Brady’s “Behind the Controversy: A Primer on U.S. Presidential Exit Polls,” a “From the Field” special presentation in three parts. In part one, “A Brief History of U.S. Exit Polls,” the authors describe the origins of exit polling, trace its development and its fortunes from the late 1960s to the present, and succinctly relate the story behind its latest controversy: the performance of the exit polls in the 2004 presidential election.
Part two, “Exit Polling Methods and Sources of Error,” is a clear, straightforward account of how exit polls are conducted, how the pollsters go about doing them right, and the various factors that might contribute to their going wrong or being inappropriately used. Lindeman and Brady conclude their comprehensive point-by-point review with their own take on what happened on election night 2004 and its aftermath.
A lengthy bibliography completes our primer on exit polling. We hope that for those of you who wish to learn more, or yourselves join in the ongoing discussions, this will prove a valuable resource to which you can return often in the coming months as you follow the continuing debates over exit polling and hone your own arguments.
Our lone feature article this month, “Not So Simple: The Role of Religion in the 2004 Presidential Election,” revisits the endlessly contentious question of the relationship between religiosity and the reelection of George W. Bush. Applying logistic regression procedures to exit poll data from 2000 as well as 2004 as the basis for their analysis, authors Leonie Huddy, Stanley Feldman, and Sarah Dutton explore the complexities of an often oversimplified phenomenon, while also demonstrating a utility of these data that extends far beyond those few suspenseful hours of projecting winners on election night: a means for understanding the composition and behavior of the American electorate over time.
“In Print” keeps us on our educational track by presenting an excerpt from the new third edition of The Voter’s Guide to Election Polls, by Michael W. Traugott and Paul J. Lavrakas, a book Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center has called “a much-needed election survey primer” that “provides a clear and concise exposition of the purposes, practices, and pitfalls of modern political polling.” It, too, touches on exit polling in its discussion of technological trends that have lately affected the relationship between polling and the news media.
Finally, we top off our coverage with an op-ed by Warren Mitofsky, the famous exit poll guy whose extensive involvement with exit polling, past and present, makes him uniquely qualified both to comment on its future and to have the last word in this, the first issue of Public Opinion Pros’s second year of publication. We think our January presentation exemplifies what POP is all about: an easily accessible, not-too-formal place for polling professionals to talk about their labors and the fruits of them with their fellow professionals and nonprofessionals alike. We hope you will find it—and all of our other offerings—both enlightening and useful in the year ahead, and we thank you for your continuing interest in our magazine.
—Lisa Ferraro Parmelee, Editor
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