Overview
- The exit-poll operation is active on Tuesday with SSRS collecting a multimodal national sample targeted at more than 75,000 voters and roughly 100,000 responses in total, including about 4,000 interviews planned in each of 15 battleground states.
- Fieldwork combines in-person questionnaires at scientifically selected precincts with pre-election phone, mail, text and online contacts, and advance voters are checked against state voter files to confirm they cast a ballot.
- Participating news organizations agreed to staged releases that begin no earlier than 5 p.m. ET and to withhold any candidate-choice estimates until polls are scheduled to close in each state.
- The data are transmitted and reweighted in real time during Election Day and then adjusted to official results later to improve accuracy, but early-night estimates carry margins of error and can shift as more interviews arrive.
- Reporters will use the poll mainly to explain who voted and why with demographic and motive breakdowns while the NBC News Decision Desk and others may use some exit-poll data to help with limited projection work.