Exit poll (Eng. Exit poll) - literally "exit poll" (sometimes use "exit poll") - is now used by sociological services around the world. What is exit polls? This is a procedure involving a survey of citizens when they leave polling stations after they have voted in any election. The results of the exit poll are widely used in the world practice of the science of sociology.
The main tasks and history of the concept
What is exit polls? This is the receipt of operational "predictions" of the outcome of any election and the further accumulation of statistics and data on the existing electorate. The country where the exit polls were first used is the United States. The journalist W. Mitofsky first conducted a survey of people at the exit when the Kentucky State Governor was elected in 1967. Since then, the concept of what the exit polls have been has not changed. And in all recent elections this poll was more or less successfully applied!
What's the point? What is exit polls? The procedure itself is as follows: citizens leaving the polling stations who have fulfilled their duty are interviewed for whom they voted. Of course, this happens on condition of anonymity. Assuming that the majority of voters have no reason to answer inaccurately, the data from such polls are used to verify officially published versions. On election day, exit polls are widely covered by the press and television. The results, as a rule, are published at a time when the plots are already closed.
Modern developments
Now widely used Internet technology - World Exit Poll. Thanks to this online development, citizens who have access to it, without leaving their home, again anonymously, can always vote for their own computer and at the right time create a good rating for almost any political as well as social activity.
Functions
The excitpol carries out the main functions - information (which includes preliminary public familiarization with the results of any election) and control (minimizing intentional distortion of the election result). And to make this data even more reliable, two (or more) research companies with independent networks of interviewers are involved. Survey samples are also divided into two or more (depending on the number of companies) parts. Then the coincidence of these survey results is another of the quality criteria for all the data obtained.
Why do people not trust?
Nevertheless, the results of these polls are not fundamentally indicative of a population that often does not know what exit polls are. In fact, they only inform for which of the candidates only the direct participants in the polls cast their votes. And the final results may differ from the results of the CEC. But, according to the world practice of opinion polls, the data of the exit polls are likely to have insignificant errors in comparison with the actual voting results.
Summary
There is also the opinion of researchers that it makes no sense to use exit polls in order to check the elections for honesty. In that case, when the main population trusts the institution of elections itself, an “exit survey” as a control of results will simply not be needed. If such confidence of the population (or group of people) is absent, such a survey simply loses its meaning. Since if pro-government structures already have enough power and economic resources to massively falsify ballots and votes, then it will be easy to imitate a positive exit polls! However, without this sociopolitical procedure - exit polls - not one of the modern elections can do it!