An Interview with Murray Edelman on the History of the Exit Poll

Murray Edelman,Xiao-Li Meng,Liberty Vittert

doi:10.1162/99608f92.3a25cd24

Abstract

An Interview with Murray Edelman on the History of the Exit Poll

Highlights

Liberty Vittert (LV): Hello and welcome to the Harvard Data Science Review’s Conversations with Leaders
Today we are speaking with Murray Edelman, an American political scientist who is regularly called the “father of the exit poll” and who was in charge of exit polls and projections used by ABS, CBS, CNN, FOX, NBC, and the Associated Press until 2003
We are sitting down today to speak with him about the founding of the exit poll, and what we can learn from the current election controversy

Summary

Introduction

Liberty Vittert (LV): Hello and welcome to the Harvard Data Science Review’s Conversations with Leaders. I remember, shortly after the election in ‘68, I think, in ‘69, I remember I had this really bright idea and I talked to Warren about and I said, ‘This exit point could be something more.’ You know, when you do a pre-election poll, you're trying to guess who the voters are. You're covering all your problems because you could weight it to the actual outcome as well.’ And so, we did that in, I think ‘70 and ’72, and we had a national exit poll and that's kind of how it started.

Results

Conclusion