The Independent View: Election Exit Polls on Life Support

After another perceived, high-profile Miss in last year’s Presidential Election, the Election Day Exit Poll is on Life Support.

The Associated Press (AP) confirmed Friday it has joined Fox News in abandoning the so-called National Election Pool, the Election surveying Instrument that the News Media, Campaign Operatives, and Political Junkies have come to love and hate, marking the end of an era when one ubiquitous Election Day Survey shaped the understanding of Presidential and State Election outcomes.

The departures of AP and Fox from the 20-year Alliance of News Organizations that have Commissioned and Reported National and State Exit Polls doesn’t necessarily sound the death knell for Exit Polling. The Four remaining Networks in the Pool: ABC News; CBS News; CNN; and NBC News, are locked into the current Exit Poll Regime through the next Presidential Election.

But they will be facing unprecedented Competition, from the AP and Fox News, among others, and the future beyond 2020 remains uncertain. “I think there will always be a place for asking voters how they voted,” said Joe Lenski, the Co-Founder and Executive Vice President at Edison Research, which conducts Exit Polls for the National Election Pool. But, He also acknowledged, “We just have to pick the best method for asking them.” That’s becoming increasingly complicated in the days of shrinking Media Budgets, and with rising percentages of Voters who cast their Ballot in Person Weeks before Election Day, or via Mail.

The National Election Pool Exit Poll does attempt to account for In-Person Early Voting, and for Mail-In Voting. In States with liberal Early-Voting Laws, the Exit-Poll samples, which are typically conducted on Election Day outside Polling Stations, are supplemented with Phone Surveys in the days leading up to Election Day with people who have already Voted. And Phone surveys take the place of In-Person Interviewing in an All-Mail Battleground state like Colorado.

The AP and Fox News haven’t left the playing field: They plan to Conduct their own Exit Polls and other Experiments that they hope will more Accurately and Efficiently, replacing the existing exit Poll.

Both the AP and Fox Projects eschew the underlying history of Exit Polls: questioning Voters in Person as they leave their Polling Place. Instead, the “Fox News Voter Analysis” in last month’s New Jersey and Virginia Gubernatorial Races consists of Telephone and Internet Interviews with Voters and Non-Voters alike, “for enhanced analytical purposes,” according to a Methodology Statement.

The AP experimented in 2016 with Capturing Voters when they left the Polls, though not in Person. “The study was designed to use geolocation technology in smartphones to verify that participants had voted, either at Election Day polling places or early-voting centers. Then, they would be sent exit poll questionnaires to complete on their smartphones,” said David Pace, AP’s News Editor for Race Calls and Special Projects, in a Press Release earlier this year describing the 2016 Project.

Lauren Easton, an AP Spokeswoman, described the Organization’s Exit-Poll Experiments as ongoing. "AP continues to experiment with alternatives to the traditional exit poll, seeking to match voter research to the ways Americans vote today," She said. "We did so during last month’s gubernatorial elections, and we plan to experiment in Alabama next week as well."

AP's departure from the Pool hasn't come without a Cost for the Wire Service. The Four remaining Members of the National Election Pool are now Pooling to receive Actual Election Results from Edison Research, the same Company they Pay to Conduct the Exit Poll, instead of the AP. Asked for comment, Easton said, "AP has been counting the vote since 1848. Thousands of AP member news organizations and customers worldwide rely on AP to count the vote and call races."

The Networks have traditionally Paid for the Exit Polls primarily for the purpose of planning their Election-Night Coverage. On a typical Presidential or Midterm Election night, Network Representatives inform their Newsrooms of the Earliest Results just after 5 p.m. Eastern time. The News Organizations use that Data to inform the tone of their Coverage, and as the Data continue to stream in, they may Project Races before any Votes are Tallied if the difference between the Candidates appears large and decisive.

Political Analyst Rhodes Cook said in his time on ABC News’ Election-Night Decision desk, they used the Exit Poll as the first barometer of a specific Election until the Votes began pouring in. “The [exit] poll was an important guide that was superseded by the actual results as the evening wore on,” said Cook. “Once the votes started coming in, then you had these combinations of the exit poll and the actual results, then you had these actual results take over.” But the Early Exit-Poll Results proved Misleading in the 2016 Presidential Election. Interviewed in the months after the Election, journalists described being briefed on the first wave of Exit Polls that Evening and feeling confident Hillary Clinton would Defeat Donald Trump. “They gave us the first wave of exit polls,” Chris Wallace, who was Hosting the Fox Network coverage. “While it didn't flat out say Clinton was going to win, if you read it, you had to think Clinton was going to win."

Fox News cited this when it announced it was Leaving the Pool earlier this year. “We’ve had concerns with Election Day exit polling for many years, and this year once again proved that they are problematic,” Jay Wallace, Fox’s Executive Vice President of News, said back in April.

In a recent Book, Trump Campaign Aides Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie described receiving a Phone Call from Chris Vlasto of ABC News right after 5 p.m. “Trump was down in eight of the eleven states by five to eight points,” they wrote, recounting Vlasto’s description of the exit Polls. “The news was devastating. A kill shot.” After the Book was published, Vlasto was reprimanded by ABC News for sharing the Embargoed Exit Poll results with one of the Campaigns. The early Exit Polls were similarly off in 2004, in the same direction. Exit Polls showed John Kerry ahead of then President George W. Bush in a number of Key States. Kerry’s Campaign Manager, Bob Shrum, famously approached the Massachusetts Senator shortly after 7 p.m. and asked, “May I be the first to say, ‘Mr. President?’”

“There has been, particularly in presidential years, something of a Democratic bias in the results, in some areas up to about 5 percentage points,” noted Cook. With various Reinvention attempts in the works, the Next Presidential Election is likely to be the last for the Exit Poll as we know it. “The four remaining members have made a commitment to what we do — a financial commitment to what we do, a technological commitment to what we do,” said Lenski. “I have that commitment from them through 2020.”