Exit Poll
An election exit poll is a poll of voters taken immediately after they have exited the polling stations. Unlike an opinion poll, which asks whom the voter plans to vote for or some similar formulation, an exit poll asks whom the voter actually voted for. A similar poll conducted before actual voters have voted is called an entrance poll. Pollsters – usually private companies working for newspapers or broadcasters – conduct exit polls to gain an early indication as to how an election has turned out, as in many elections the actual result may take hours or even days to count.
Warren Mitofsky, founder of Mitofsky International, is credited with having invented the exit poll.
Read more about Exit Poll: Purpose, Problems, Organizations That Conduct Election Exit Polling, Criticism and Controversy
Famous quotes containing the words exit and/or poll:
“Exit the mental moonlight, exit lex,
Rex and principium, exit the whole
Shebang. Exeunt omnes. Here was prose
More exquisite than any tumbling verse:
A still new continent in which to dwell.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“If Rosa Parks had taken a poll before she sat down in that bus in Montgomery, she’d still be standing.”
—Mary Frances Berry (b. 1938)