California citizens vote early at the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters on Nov. 4 in San Jose. | AP Photo Exit polls under siege The flow of Election Day information is about to change dramatically.

Ever since Jimmy Carter’s early concession in 1980 was blamed for losses to down-ballot Democrats in Western states, both politicians and media outlets have been religious about not reporting the results until everyone’s voted.

But that’s all about to change, starting early Tuesday morning.


This year, a handful of different projects are underway to disrupt the rhythm and flow of information on Election Day — including one controversial effort that some worry could affect the actual election results.

Slate and Vice News have partnered with Votecastr, a company helmed by Obama and Bush campaign veterans, to provide real-time projections of how the candidates are faring in each state throughout the day. They expect to begin posting projections at 8 a.m. Eastern time on Election Day — a dramatic departure from current practice, where representatives from a consortium of news organizations (The Associated Press, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News and NBC News) huddle in a quarantine room without cell phones, poring over the earliest exit poll data but declining to release anything that points to an election result until all the polls have closed.

Journalist Sasha Issenberg — Votecastr’s chief strategist and author of “The Victory Lab,” a book that detailed the extensive voter-data operations in modern political campaigns — said the project, which seeks to replicate how campaigns model Election-Day turnout, will end the information blackout that exists between Monday afternoon, when the last polls are released, and Tuesday evening, when the first votes are tabulated.

“Much of the uncertainty in polling has to do with turnout,” said Issenberg, “and we're hoping to fill in the 24-hour void between the last pre-election poll analysis and the counting of the votes with data that can begin to answer the heretofore unanswerable question: who's actually voting?”

That gives some pause to Election-Day veterans, particularly those in the media, who worry that collecting and reporting this data while votes are being cast could impact the outcome. When the Votecastr project was announced back in September, ABC News decision desk consultant Ken Goldstein told the New York Times , “I’m profoundly uncomfortable with characterizing election results during Election Day.”

“Each of the six members of the [National Election Pool] have made a pledge before Congress not to make projections based on exit polling before all precincts in each state have closed,” said Joe Lenski, vice president at Edison Research, the firm that conducts the exit polls.

Issenberg rejects the premise that the Votecastr data — which will combine turnout levels at target precincts with pre-election polling data to model the results in each state — will affect the election results.

“It's not as though voters go to the polls without indications about the state of the horse race,” he said. “They've seen no shortage of polls, poll averages, poll aggregations, simulations and predictions before Election Day, and now see plenty of early-vote numbers being analyzed to determine who's winning and losing. Why should information on Election Day itself be held to a different standard than on the day before it? “

For his part, Lenski agreed that the projections are unlikely to influence the outcome — whether it’s voters in a state staying home late in the day because projections show a decisive lead for one candidate, or voters in Western states not going to the polls after Eastern states are called.

“There are a lot of political people that try to make the case that early projections would decrease turnout,” Lenski said. “There’s never been any real signs or evidence that would be the case.”

Votecastr won’t be the only new data source for interested observers on Election Day itself. POLITICO is partnering with Morning Consult to conduct a survey of voters after they have cast ballots.

That project began two weeks ago, with interviews of early in-person and mail voters. But a large number of interviews will be conducted on Election Day itself.

Voters will complete the interviews over the internet, beginning one hour after the polls open in their state. Respondents will be asked whether they have voted, and how they voted: either using early voting, by mail or on Election Day in person.

POLITICO and Morning Consult will report on some of the results during the day — but, like with the traditional network exit polls, those reports won’t include anything that characterizes the outcome of the race.

“While we want our poll to provide a real-time look at how voters are feeling on Election Day, we will not be releasing any of our polling on how the candidates are performing prior to poll close on Election Day,” said Kyle Dropp, co-founder and chief research officer at Morning Consult.

The official network exit polls are continuing apace. Edison Research, the company that produces the exit polls for the consortium, will have 933 interviewers spread across the country at targeted polling places on Tuesday. Additionally, Edison Research began phone polling of early voters in late October to capture the nearly 40 percent of voters expected to cast their ballots before Election Day.

It’s a multimillion-dollar endeavor to build the infrastructure and process the interviews, which have two major uses: one on election night itself, and another for posterity.

“What they’re using it for is to guide their election-night broadcast,” said Lenski. “They’re looking at it to say which are the states that are going to be really close today? Which are the states that are going to be blowouts that we can call right at poll closing?”

The exit poll also exists as a record of who voted, and what they thought of the issues at play in the election. “It’s basically the biggest survey out there of actual voters,” Lenski said.

While the exit poll is weighted to the election results to make it more accurate, observers have pointed out imprecisions in some of its estimates over the long run. Those inconsistencies are minor, but combined with the high price tag, some news organizations are searching for other answers.

The Associated Press is commissioning two separate experiments on Election Day, according to David Pace, AP news editor for elections and special projects, from the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago.

“One is a national survey similar to the National Exit Poll; the other is a test of the feasibility of using the GPS capability of mobile phones to administer election surveys to voters shortly after they leave their Election Day or early voting polling place,” said Pace.

But, Pace said, the AP “will not be using the results from either experiment in our election coverage or race call decisions this year.”

The AP’s other polling partner, GfK Custom Research, has conducted polls of actual voters in recent elections that Pace described as “encouraging in our search for an accurate and cost-effective way to survey voters around Election Day.”

That’s also what Morning Consult is trying to accomplish, in partnership with POLITICO.

“Our exit poll questionnaire will be one of the most comprehensive surveys available on Election Day,” said Dropp, the Morning Consult pollster. “It contains dozens of questions on perceptions of the state of economy, reasoning for vote choice, and key candidate characteristics. We want to provide a complete view of how the electorate is feeling about their vote, the candidates, and the state of the country as they head to the polls.”

Voter estimates aren’t the only cause of disruption coming on Tuesday. Buzzfeed, between its online news site and live video presentation on Twitter, is trying to get ahead of the actual vote count the AP provides to the networks and other media outlets, including POLITICO.

BuzzFeed is partnering with Decision Desk HQ, which describes itself as “the only independent and comprehensive election night results service outside” of the AP.

BuzzFeed says it will report Decision Desk HQ’s calls, but also look for “a second trusted source” before declaring a state off the board.

BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith says he hopes the project provides “a clear window not just into who’s winning, but also how journalists and analysts are making these calls” — which could demystify the behind-the-scenes machinations of how Americans experience the vote count.

