What are exit polls?

Answer 1

The practice of exit polling is used extensively by the news media in elections in the United States. Generally speaking these polls are used in state and federal elections. The operation of this practice is to ask citizens exiting polling places how they voted. People often do not want to waste their time in answering the questions of news reporters. When they do, however, it provides voting data to allow the news media to make projections on election winners and losers. Here is an example. In a national election there are places where a political party has many registered voters and has historically, for example, voted for Democrats. If based on the data received in exit polling, respondents inform reporters that they have voted for Republican candidates, instead of Democrats, this unusual voting pattern may project that Republicans are winning a particular election.

Answer 2

Exit polling is a practice by the news media in the US to help project winners and losers in state, local and national elections. The operation consists of having reporters at polling places ask citizens after they have voted to tell them who they voted for. This is a voluntary operation, of course, and if, for example, a heavily dominated voting district of Democrats produces data that reveals many Democrats have voted Republican, this information is "digested" by the news media on their own types of survey analysis and helps them project a winner.