Election Day 2008 Voter Scorecard

• Activity Number: 479
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 5, 2009 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
• Author(s): Kate Hobson*+ and Edward Mulrow and Hee-Choon Shin and Fritz Scheuren
• Companies: NORC at the University of Chicago and NORC at the University of Chicago and NORC at the University of Chicago and NORC at the University of Chicago

Abstract

During the 2008 election, as in every recent election, we have been inundated with polling results. The focus of these has been on the potential winning candidate and who will or did vote for him or her. Seldom have there been surveys that asked voters about the voting experience itself. This paper discusses such a poll. Issues of design are covered, with sampling and especially nonsampling issues given prominence. There have been smaller efforts of this sort in 2004 and 2006. The effort was divided into three parts. A sample of early voter experience in Ohio, and two samples of election-day experience, one in Ohio and one in the Washington Metropolitan area For the Washington Sample a conventional exit polling example was also conducted.