What you need to know about Election Day exit polls
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(WASHINGTON) — Anyone who has watched Election Day coverage in the past, or is excited to do so in the hotly contested 2024 election, has probably heard anchors or analysts refer to exit polls. But what are they and how do they work?
Exit polls are surveys conducted as voters leave their polling places on Election Day. Reaching voters at that moment helps ensure that the people surveyed have actually voted. Critical questions of who won and why are answered from exit poll results. Exit polls tell what issues were important in the election and how important demographic groups voted.
How are exit polls conducted?
Interviewers stand outside polling places at randomly selected precincts across the country and approach voters at specific intervals as they exit, for example every fifth or ninth voter.
Voters who agree to participate fill out a short, confidential questionnaire and place it in a ballot box.
Interviewers phone in the results three times during the day. When a voter refuses to participate, interviewers note the gender and approximate age and race of that voter. This information is used to statistically adjust the exit poll to ensure that all voters are fairly represented in the final results.
What sort of questions are asked in an exit poll?
The exit poll questionnaire asks who people voted for, their demographics, opinions about the candidates and opinions on important issues. Here’s an example of a previous exit poll issue question, from 2022:
Do you think the condition of the nation’s economy is: 1. Excellent 2. Good 3. Not so good 4. Poor
Are exit polls accurate?
Exit polls, like any other survey, are subject to sampling and non-sampling error. Before news organizations report exit poll results or make projections, they compare results to pre-election polls and the voting history in that precinct and have statisticians and political experts carefully review the data.
After the polls close, exit poll results are weighted using the actual vote to make the data more accurate. Exit polls may be used to project the winners of races where the margin between the candidates is large. But most election projections are made after the polls close based on actual vote data.
How do exit polls account for the people who vote early or by mail?
In the 2020 presidential election, about 70 percent of voters voted before Election Day using some form of mail or early in-person voting. That number is expected to be about 60 percent in 2024.
Exit polls miss those who vote before Election Day. However, it is important to include them in the data in order to have accurate information about all voters.
Exit polls include those who vote absentee or early in two ways. The first is by conducting multi-mode polls (i.e. by phone, text and email) among those who have voted absentee or early. Second, in states with a high proportion of early in-person voters, exit polls are conducted in the weeks leading up to Election Day as these voters leave early-voting polling places. Data from the multi-mode polls and early-voter exit polls are combined with the Election Day exit poll to provide a complete picture of all voters, regardless of when they voted.
When will exit poll results be reported?
On Election Day, there is a strict embargo on any data coming from the early waves of exit poll data until 5 p.m. ET. By about 5:45 p.m. ET, some initial demographic information about voters and their views on key issues in the election will be available on ABCNews.com. After the polls close in a state, the complete exit poll crosstabs (which are data tables showing how a variety of subgroups have voted) will be posted on ABCNews.com.
ABC News will not project a winner until the last scheduled poll closing time in each state. If a race is not projected at poll closing time, the projection will incorporate actual vote data and will be made as soon as the data warrant. Information will be constantly updated throughout the evening on ABCNews.com and on all ABC News programs.
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and Jewish advocacy groups on Friday forcefully criticized what they called former President Donald Trump’s “dangerous” and “antisemitic” comments saying Jewish voters would be to blame if he lost the presidential election.
“I’ll put it to you very simply and as gently as I can: I wasn’t treated properly by the voters who happen to be Jewish,” Trump said at an event Thursday night in Washington that was meant to highlight antisemitism. “I don’t know. Do they know what the hell is happening if I don’t win this election? And the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens, because at 40% that means 60% of the people are voting for the enemy.”
The backlash was fierce.
“Donald Trump is resorting to the oldest antisemitic tropes in the book because he’s weak and can’t stand the fact that the majority of America is going to reject him in November. But we know that words like these can have dangerous consequences,” Harris campaign national security spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein said in a statement. “As Trump has proven, including over the past few weeks with his lies about Springfield, Ohio, he will cling to fearmongering and intimidation, no matter the cost.”
Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, have in recent days pushed the baseless claim that Haitian migrants in Springfield, most of whom are legally there, of stealing and eating neighbors’ pets — an accusation roundly refuted by local officials.
“When Donald Trump loses this election, it will be because Americans from all faiths, ethnicities, and backgrounds came together to turn the page on the divisiveness he demonstrates every day,” Finkelstein added.
Harris’ husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, who is Jewish himself, wrote on X Friday that Jewish Americans would not be “intimidated” by Trump’s attacks. “Last night, Donald Trump once again fanned the flames of antisemitism by trafficking in tropes blaming and scapegoating Jews. He even did it at an event purporting to fight antisemitism, no less,” Emhoff wrote. “This is dangerous and must be condemned. We will not be intimidated and will continue to live openly, proudly, and without fear as Jews.”
Non-partisan Jewish advocacy organizations also vocalized their strong opposition to Trump’s comment.
“Whoever a majority of the Jewish community votes for, Jews — roughly 2 percent of the U.S. population — cannot and should not be blamed for the outcome of the election,” the American Jewish Committee wrote in a statement. “Setting up anyone to say, ‘we lost because of the Jews’ is outrageous and dangerous. Thousands of years of history have shown that scapegoating Jews can lead to antisemitic hate and violence.”
Some Jewish voters will vote for Harris, and some will vote for Trump, the AJC said, adding that “None of us, by supporting the candidate we choose, is ‘voting for the enemy.'”
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblat wrote on social media that Trump’s comments contradicted the message of the antisemitic event at which he was speaking and can make it worse for Jewish Americans.
“Preemptively blaming American Jews for your potential election loss does zero to help American Jews. It increases their sense of alienation in a moment of vulnerability when right-wing extremists and left-wing antizionists continually demonize and slander Jews,” Greenblat wrote “Let’s be clear, this speech likely will spark more hostility and further inflame an already bad situation.”
Amy Spitalnick, who leads the progressive-leaning Jewish Council for Public Affairs, encouraged more people to join growing chorus slamming Trump’s comment.
“Last night, Trump preemptively blamed the Jews for his possible electoral loss, after spending months calling Jews who don’t support him ‘crazy’ & ‘disloyal.’ Speaking out against this isn’t about partisan politics — it’s about fundamental Jewish safety,” Spitalnick wrote. “We need everyone to do so.”
Trump did receive backing from some on the political right. The Republican Jewish Coalition, a major Jewish political group that has endorsed Trump, praised Trump for his remarks on combatting antisemitism.
Matt Brooks, the CEO of the organization, told ABC News in a phone interview that he thought the comments about Jewish voters and the election were about motivating Jewish voters, and that Democratic claims otherwise are a deflection.
“I think what it was is the president trying to motivate the Jewish community,” Brooks said, adding that Trump “realizes what’s at stake” for American Jews, who feel unsafe in America due to a rise in antisemitism. (Brooks pointed to intimidation faced by Jewish students on college campuses as one example.)
“This is an absolute distraction, to deflect that [Trump] made many significant and important contributions to the Jewish community,” Brooks said.
He added that Trump was also indicating how close of an election it may be in battleground states, where given the likely slim margin, “if the Jewish vote doesn’t move in his favor, it may cost him the election.”
(WASHINGTON) — As Election Day nears, tens of millions of voters have already cast their ballots throughout the country.
Whether through mail-in ballots or early in-person polling stations, more than 68 million Americans, roughly 43% of the 2020 turnout, had voted against standing in line on Election Day as of Friday afternoon, according to data from the University of Florida’s Election Lab.
Academic experts, reporters and pundits have been going through basic and limited data gleaned from the early voting numbers, trying to get clues about next week’s outcome.
That picture, however, is not exactly black and white, according to Charles Stewart, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s election data science lab.
“It’s like talking about the weather,” he said. “The candidates, the press, etcetera — really are trying to draw conclusions just on the face value of the data, but there really isn’t a lot there to say who is winning.”
That said, Stewart said the early voting data does provide some insights when it comes to this year’s voting patterns and overall turnout — indicators that could help explain how the election turns out.
A flip in the ways people early vote
Voting trends have shown that more people have been choosing to cast their ballots before Election Day, and this has increased in numbers over the last 30 years, but 2020 turned out to be a major outlier, according to Stewart.
In the last presidential election, 69% of the 158 million total votes were cast before Election Day either through the mail, which included mail ballots dropped off in person, or at early voting poll sites, according to data from MIT.
Some 43% of the 2020 early votes came from mail ballots, according to the data.
Stewart said the COVID-19 pandemic forced many voters, who were already heavily engaged and wanted to be safe, to opt into using mail ballots or smaller voting lines if available.
“There was a speculation of what would happen with the shift once the pandemic was over,” he said.
However, in this year’s early voting there’s been a drop in voters choosing mail-in voting, Stewart said.
“The main trend I’m seeing is that the interest of voting by mail has shifted to voting in-person,” Stewart said.
He noted that shift is apparent in Georgia, which has seen record early voting numbers, with over 3.8 million ballots cast as of Friday. Roughly 92% of those were cast at in-person polling places and the rest via mail, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.
Stewart said some states, including swing states Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Arizona, only offer early voting through in-person absentee options. Under this option, a voter must request an absentee ballot, fill it out, and then deposit it in either a ballot box or at a designated location, and they are counted as a mail ballot voter.
Some voters may not have the time or energy to go through those extra steps to cast their ballots early, and are likely going to vote in-person Stewart said.
“If you have to vote early in person you have to figure out where that precinct is but you have to find out which is closer to your house or errands. With voting by mail, you have to take the effort to apply, to fill it out and return it and hope that the mail is delivered on time,” he said. “With Election Day voting you likely have a polling site that is much closer to you.”
Early-voting method preference hasn’t the only thing that’s seen a flip, according to Stewart.
Partisan numbers do not give any indication of outcome
Stewart said historical trends show that the majority of early voters made their decisions a long time ago and are likely politically active.
This year’s data shows that to be the case, he said, bit noted a major change in partisan turnout in several battleground states, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab.
Registered Republicans have seen a higher early voting turnout in battlegrounds Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina in this election compared to 2024 as of Friday, according to the data.
Typically, Democrats have had an advantage in early voting. However, Trump has pushed his supporters to cast their vote earlier and that appears to have an impact, Stewart said.
While Republican officials have been touting these higher numbers as a sign of growing support, Stewart warned there is more nuance to the data.
He noted it shows, so far, that a large number of the registered Republicans who cast their votes eary came from people who voted on Election Day in 2020 and were not new voters.
Stewart said this would mean there would be fewer Republican voters casting their ballots on Election Day and thus their votes may not be reported until much later on election night or even for days afterward.
In 2020, many swing states saw their Democratic tallies rise throughout the election night and into the week, creating a “red mirage” effect on the outcome.
That mirage and “blue wave” could be muted this time around, Stewart said.
“Whatever the blue shift is, there will probably be less of a steep slope to it,” he said.
What do gender, race say about the early vote
Democrats have been touting the gender gap as a factor in their favor in the early voting numbers, as over 54% of women have cast their vote as of Friday, according to the University of Florida data.
Stewart said that assumption is not noteworthy.
Women have always been the majority of the electorate in presidential elections, going as far back as 1980, according to the Center for Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
Stewart said this is also true of early voters.
“It’s not always obvious to the public that there’s always been a gender gap,” he said.In 2020, many swing states saw their Democratic tallies rise throughout the election night and into the week, creating a “red mirage” effect on the outcome.
That mirage and “blue wave” could be muted this time around, Stewart said.
“Whatever the blue shift is, there will probably be less of a steep slope to it,” he said.
What do gender, race say about the early vote
Democrats have been touting the gender gap as a factor in their favor in the early voting numbers, as over 54% of women have cast their vote as of Friday, according to the University of Florida data.
Stewart said that assumption is not noteworthy.
Women have always been the majority of the electorate in presidential elections, going as far back as 1980, according to the Center for Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
Stewart said this is also true of early voters.
“It’s not always obvious to the public that there’s always been a gender gap,” he said.
When it comes to race, white voters are more likely to cast their votes by mail than Black voters, according to the MIT data.
Stewart said this stems from traditions going back to the civil rights movement.
“African Americans fought and sometimes died for being able to march into the voting booth. That’s been instilled in the community,” he said.
This practice is one factor in large numbers of Black voters heading to in-person early voting poll sites in states such as Georgia and South Carolina, where that option is available.
Churches, civil rights groups and other organizations with ties to the Black community have been pushing voters to head to the early voting polls, using campaigns such as “souls to the polls” so that they can avoid any complications on Election Day.
Groups in Georgia in particular have stressed voting early to circumvent some of the restrictive voting laws that have been put in place since the 2020 election.
As of Friday evening, more than 1 million Black voters have cast their ballots, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.
“The mobilization efforts have clearly proven effective,” Stewart said.
Signs point to high turnout
Stewart said the one definite conclusion that can be drawn from the early voting data is that this year’s overall turnout will be “on par” with 2020’s, which was the highest voter turnout by percentage in over 100 years.
“It could be the high 160 (million),” he estimated.
Stewart said that the early-voting trends have shown that voters under 25 have not yet voted and they will typically line up on Election Day.
“Those populations are really heavily represented on Election Day,” he said.
Stewart reiterated that with the pandemic over, a good number of the 2020 early voters will likely shift back to Election Day voting, especially if it presents itself as the easier option for their locations and schedules.
As for the future, Steward predicted that the rise in Republican voters voting early will continue in future cycles along with the overall trend of the electorate opting for early voting.
“The data is showing this organic increase in early voting even after the pandemic,” he said. “Voters want more options, and they will seriously consider voting if they have more choices.”
(WASHINGTON) — As Americans head to the polls this Election Day, trust that their vote will be counted accurately and that the democratic process is safe from interference is vital, experts said.
But with early voting well underway and just days before the remainder of the 2024 presidential election ballots are cast, unfounded conspiracy theories about the safety of voting machines loom over the fight for the White House.
The 2020 election saw former President Donald Trump sparking some distrust in the voting system that was purported by some fellow Republicans, supporters and media outlets.
Despite voting machine conspiracy theories, such as internet hacking and widespread physical tampering, being debunked, misinformation about the democratic process is ubiquitous on social media and fodder for some of the recent lawsuits filed by RNC-aligned groups in key swing states.
Elon Musk — a major Trump backer and the owner of X — recently continued to stoke voting machines falsehoods, telling the crowd at a town hall in Pennsylvania, “The last thing I would do is trust a computer program, because it’s just too easy to hack,” Musk said.
However, multiple reviews into 2020 voter fraud claims and a landmark defamation lawsuit between Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News found the vote-rigging conspiracy theories, and Trump’s assertion he won the election over President Joe Biden, to be unfounded.
In April 2023, Dominion reached a nearly $800 million settlement with Fox for spreading the false theories across the conservative news stations’ platforms.
Additionally, state and federal courts dismissed more than 60 lawsuits across six states from Trump and his allies aiming to overturn the 2020 election results.
“There was no credibility to those claims,” Lauren Cristella, the president of Committee of Seventy, a nonpartisan government watchdog organization in Philadelphia, told ABC News.
“I am confident that our elections are free, fair, safe and secure, and that the systems we have in place, the checks and balances that we have in place, are working,” Cristella added.
So, how do voting machines work? And what security measures are in place from the federal level to the community level to ensure that every vote is counted and free from interference?
Before Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris vie for America’s vote on Nov. 5, experts said understanding the security measures that follow ballots from the polls to the count can bring clarity and comfort to the process.
What voting machines are used in the election?
While election officials use technology for voter registration, tallying, and, in some cases, vote-casting, the system is largely centered around paper ballots.
“In nearly all places across the country, about 98% of voters, when they cast their ballot, there is going to be a paper record of their vote,” Derek Tisler, who serves as counsel in the Brennan Center for Justice’s elections and government program, told ABC News.
Historically, there have been five types of voting machines used in the U.S.: hand-counted paper, mechanical lever machines, punch-card machines, scanned paper ballots and direct-recording electronic devices, according to the MIT Election Lab.
Going into the 2024 election, optical scan paper ballot systems are widely used to tally physical ballot votes, which can be likened to the technology used to score a standardized test, according to MIT.
Voters mark their ballots in a private voting booth and then it is scanned as it’s being deposited in the ballot box, with the votes being tallied at the end of the day.
Direct recording electronic systems utilize buttons or a touch screen to record votes, often with a paper ballot record for audits or a recount.
And ballot-marking devices and systems, which are entirely electronic, are primarily used to accommodate voters with disabilities.
There are 10 different voting system manufacturers that have been tested and approved by the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC), including Clear Ballot, Dominion Voting Systems and Election Systems & Software (ES&S), to name a few.
The road to approval includes stress tests on the equipment and checks for software flaws, making sure the machines have the basic functionality, accessibility and security capabilities required of these systems, according to the EAC.
“So every voting system, including ours, goes through a certification process in accredited test labs,” Chip Trowbridge, the chief technology officer of Clear Ballot, told ABC News.
“Every change, no matter how big or how small, if it’s a source code or software change, has to be reviewed,” Trowbridge said.
Individual states and local jurisdictions also have certification processes for voting machine manufacturers that vary based on location, according to Trowbridge.
What safety measures are taken to protect voting machines?
One of the first lines of defense against tampering is the physical security of voting machines, according to Ted Allen, an integrated systems engineer professor at Ohio State University and member of the MIT Election Lab.
Leading up to Election Day and after votes are cast, the machines are stored in secure locations with access limited to election officials, Allen told ABC News.
At polling locations, voting machines are constantly under surveillance, with election officials and security personnel trained to ensure that no unauthorized access is possible, according to Allen.
“The paper, the chain of custody of the equipment and the chain of custody of the ballots are all generally, very carefully studied and controlled,” Allen said.
The 2020 election, however, did see a few individuals being charged for with tampering with voting machines.
Tina Peters, a Republican election official in Colorado, was sentenced to nine years in prison for leading a security breach of the county’s election system after being inspired by false and baseless claims of voting fraud.
She was convicted for giving an individual access to the election software she used for her county. Screenshots of the software appeared on right-wing websites.
In Georgia, bail bondsman Scott Hall was charged in relation to the alleged breach of voting machine equipment in the wake of the 2020 election in Coffee County.
Hall and several of his co-defendants allegedly “entered into a conspiracy to intentionally interfere” with the 2020 election results and “unlawfully” access voting machines in order to obtain data, including images of ballots.
Hall pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties. He will get probation and has agreed to testify moving forward, including at the trial of other co-defendants.
While no system is ever completely impervious to threats, voting machines are protected by a range of technical and procedural measures that make them extremely difficult to hack.
A spokesperson for Election Systems & Software, Inc., told ABC News, that outside of physical controls, the company’s voting equipment adheres to secure practices for the creation, transfer and storage of important election files and data.
Using encryption and digital signing for data, cryptographic modules that meet the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) and creating encrypted USB flash drives programmed for that specific election all prevent tampering by unauthorized agents, according to ES&S.
Do voting machines connect to the internet?
A key safeguard in making voting machines difficult to hack is the lack of internet access during the voting process.
The machines used to scan ballots at a voting precinct are incapable of having any Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, radio or network connection at all, according to Trowbridge.
“Those systems absolutely cannot have any network,” Trowbridge said. “In fact, if you look at the machines from Clear Ballot, the only wire that comes out of them is a power cord.”
Central scanning equipment is networked, according to Trowbridge, but the technology is on an air-gapped network that is completely separate from the public internet.
This significantly reduces the risk of remote hacking or unauthorized access from external sources, he said.
Even if a hacker attempts to access a voting machine, they would need to physically tamper with the machine itself, which may be more challenging due to the physical security measures.
Looking to Nov. 5, Derek Tisler emphasized there are always checks and balances available in the process to make sure that there is no one individual who could disrupt anything.
“Public trust is so essential to the democratic process, and that is why elections are transparent,” Tisler said.
