Researchers at the University’s Oregon Survey Research Laboratory have been tapped to compile exit poll results for the presidential election and provide the final numbers to networks such as CNN, Fox News and the Associated Press. Exit poll results try to predict the presidential race by asking anonymous citizens who they voted for and their demographics, which allows for voter analysis, estimates on outcome and outlines voter trends.
The project’s research team conducted the exit polls over the phone to see who Oregon voters decided should be the next president. The team began the interviews on Oct. 22, the first day that mail-in ballots became available to voters.
While traditionally polls are conducted as voters leave the voting stations, the same can’t be done in Oregon because of its mail-in ballot system.
“Since we are conducting the exit poll over the phone and not outside the voting booths like in typical states, it’s a little more difficult,” said political science professor Joel Bloom, who directed the project.
He said with early voting and absentee ballots, it’s getting more difficult for other states to conduct exit polls.
“There are 13 states where they have to do both phones and go into the voting booths,” Bloom said. With traditional exit polls, analysis and trends are easier for pollers to understand than over the phone, he said. The research team hired approximately 40 interviewers, typically undergraduate students at the University, who called people from two lists. One list consisted entirely of registered Oregon voters and the other random households in the state. From these two lists, researchers can find patterns and a representative base for voter turnout and candidate choice.
Exit poll numbers are not released until the polls are closed, which means that analysis of how Oregon voted cannot be revealed until election day.
“We feel we got inclusive information of voters,” Bloom said.
But the telephone surveys might inherently exclude people, as most exit poll surveys do not call cell phones and there may be other conditions that rule out or underestimate certain demographics.
“With young college students who only own cell phones, they often move frequently, too, and don’t update their registration information, so we do not typically see high turnout, and they represent two to three percent of the population,” Bloom said. “Unless they come out to vote in overwhelming fashion, they won’t impact the election.”
Bloom said in four years he expects cell phones to become of a factor for exit pollers. As of now, he said that the exclusion of cell phones does not disregard younger voters — in the interviews, researchers ask for the voter in the house with the nearest birthday, or else they’d get a disproportionate amount of women interviewees, Bloom said.
Junior Russ Casler, one of the student interviewers for the project, said the project had a sample size of about 900 people.
“We got a lower response on this survey than others, which is to be expected,” Casler said. With it being so late in the election season, people have already been so inundated with political messages that they may be less willing to answer questions, he said, and some may have thought it was a push poll rather than an exit poll.
“I don’t think some people understood the legitimacy of it,” Casler said. He added that response rates were higher from the list of registered voters than from the random number list.
The survey included questions on who the voters had chosen in national and statewide races, ballot measures, statewide issues and approval ratings, Casler said.
The research team does not provide analysis to go along with exit poll numbers, Bloom said. The analysis is handled by the Network Election Pool, a consortium of news providers including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News and the Associated Press. The NEP and each network have analysis teams that slice and dice the exit poll information and find a conclusion, Bloom said.
Bloom also said many networks are now keeping analysts in a room without any outside media interference where they will report election results based only on their research, in the hopes of not replaying the follow-the-network trend in the last presidential election where Fox News led with reports of Bush’s Florida win and other networks followed and reported the same. He said the Associated Press alone stationed pollers in every county in the country so it could compile results with voter choices and trends to understand how each county and demographic vote.
At the University, students seem equally divided regarding whether or not the presidency will be decided with a recount.
“I think we’ll find out by tomorrow night or Wednesday,” senior Kate Simrell said Monday. She added that she did not think her candidate — John Kerry — would be the winner.
Senior Gavin Francis said he sees the outcome much differently.
“I think it will go into a recount and, what’s more, I think there will be judicial action and that Kerry will be more reluctant to give up than Al Gore in 2000,” Francis said.

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News Editor Ayisha Yahya
contributed to this report.