(WASHINGTON) — Anyone watching Choice Covering the day in the past, or is excited to do so in the hotly contested 2024 election, you’ve 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 point helps ensure that the people polled actually voted. The key questions about who won and why are answered from the exit poll results. Exit polls tell which issues were important in the election and how important demographic groups voted.

How are exit polls conducted?

Interviewers stand outside polling stations in randomly selected precincts across the country and approach voters at specific intervals when they leave, for example every fifth or ninth voter.

Voters who agree to participate complete a short confidential questionnaire and place it in a ballot box.

Interviewers call the results three times a day. When a voter declines to participate, interviewers note that voter’s gender and approximate age and race. This information is used for statistical adjustment of the exit poll to ensure that all voters are correctly represented in the final results.

What kind of questions are asked in an exit survey?

The exit poll asks who people voted for, their demographics, opinions about the candidates, and opinions about important issues. Here is an example of a previous exit poll question, from 2022:

Do you think the state 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 errors. Before news organizations report exit poll results or make projections, they compare the results to pre-election polls and voting history in that constituency and have statisticians and political experts pore over the data.

After the polls close, the exit poll results are weighted using the actual vote to make the data more accurate. Exit polls can be used to project winners in races where the margin between candidates is large. But most electoral projections are made after polls close based on actual voting data.

How do I account for the exit poll for early or mail-in voters?

In the 2020 presidential election, about 70% of voters voted before Election Day using some form of mail-in or in-person early voting. This number is expected to be around 60% in 2024.

The exit poll misses 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 absentee or early voters in two ways. The first is by conducting surveys in multiple ways (ie, phone, text, and email) among absentee or early voters. Second, in states with a high proportion of early in-person voters, exit polls occur in the weeks leading up to Election Day as these voters leave early voting locations. Data from multi-mode polls and early voter exit polls are combined with election day exit polls to provide a complete picture of all voters, regardless of when they voted.

When will the exit poll results be reported?

On Election Day, there is a strict embargo on any data from the first waves of exit poll data until 5pm ET. Around 5:45 PM ET, some initial demographic information about voters and their views on the key issues of the election will be available on ABCNews.com. After polls close in a state, full crosstabs of exit polls (which are tables of data showing how a variety of subgroups 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 the close of polling, the projection will incorporate the actual vote data and will be made as soon as the data is justified. Information will be constantly updated throughout the evening on ABCNews.com and on all ABC News programs.

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