Exit polls have become an extremely popular device in media reporting of elections.

An exit poll is really just a species of opinion poll (as compared with quick counts, which count a sample of real votes). Voters are asked whom they voted for as they leave – exit – the polling station. Well-conducted exit polls achieve a high degree of accuracy, but many exit polls are not well conducted.

Reporting of exit polls should be subject to all the same strictures as reporting opinion polls: who conducted the survey, how many people were interviewed, where, and so on. However, there are additional considerations in reporting exit polls. These relate to the two main purposes for which the media are interested in exit polls:

• To try to predict the actual result of the election.
• To try to see if discrepancies between exit polls and real results indicate any faults in the election process.

For as long as exit polls have been reported, this has generally been at the moment when actual polls close. The exit poll “results” fill the gap in news coverage while the newspapers and networks wait for the real results to arrive. This use of exit polls is fairly harmless and is now scarcely controversial.

What has become a matter of controversy is the reporting of exit poll results before actual voting has finished. This is particularly an issue in large countries spread across several time zones. It has been Internet reports, rather than reports in the traditional media, that have stoked this controversy.

The country where this has been a particular issue is the United States – spread across several time zones and with widespread Internet access. The main argument against reporting exit poll findings before the end of voting is that these might influence people who have not yet voted.

Internet journalists have argued, on the contrary, that to stop reporting of exit polls at this time is a restriction of freedom of expression. The political elite has this information; all that the Internet is doing is making it available to a wider public. It is also sometimes argued that the nature of the Internet would require a voter to seek out such information, rather than hearing it on radio or television. However, the development of syndicated news feeds and email list servers rather undermines the latter argument.

Traditional journalists in print and broadcasting maintain that just because they have acquired a piece of information (like an exit poll result) this does not mean that they have to publish it. Sometimes they may consider that there is an ethical obligation not to do so. This is a debate that has no definitive resolution.

The use of exit polls as an indicator of electoral malpractice is equally problematic, hinging as it does on the quality of the exit poll methodology. If the media are going to use exit polls to damn the administration of an election, then they need to be sure that they understand the quality and methodology of the exit poll. In some instances – Ukraine 2004, for example – exit poll findings have provided a prima facie case for alleging electoral malpractice. Of course these allegations would have to be sustained through detailed investigation into the actual conduct of the election. In other instances – Venezuela’s 2004 referendum was a case in point – the exit poll methodology was so dubious that the findings cast no serious doubt on the result of the actual vote.