Abstract
<p>Scholars and practitioners alike are increasingly concerned about growing and differential rates of nonresponse in exit polls. In this paper, I examine how exit poll sponsorship affects response intentions. I leverage an experiment imbedded in a nationally-representative probability sample telephone sample that probed respondents about exit poll participation intentions. The survey, fielded by Opinion Research Corporation for CNN in November 2006, randomly varied whether respondents were informed the exit poll would be conducted by the “television networks,” specifically, or generically, by “some organizations.” The results reveal that respondents are significantly more likely to report they would be likely to participate in exit polls when television networks are explicitly identified as sponsors. These effects are robust across a series of specifications and do not appear to be moderated by key observable attributes including age, gender, race, partisanship or educational attainment. </p>
Highlights
Declining survey response rates are a growing concern in the United States and elsewhere (Keeter, 2011)
The results reveal that respondents are significantly more likely to report they would be likely to participate in exit polls when television networks are explicitly identified as sponsors
I collapsed the response categories in this study to create a dichotomous measure of exit poll participation intent: “very likely” and “somewhat likely” were combined and categorized as “likely” to participate, while “not very likely” and “not likely at all” were combined and categorized as “unlikely.” Overall, I find that 68.6 percent of respondents assigned to the “television networks” condition indicated they would be likely to participate in exit polls, compared to 62.6 percent of respondents in the alternative condition
Summary
Declining survey response rates are a growing concern in the United States and elsewhere (Keeter, 2011). Substantial and growing rates of early and mail-in (including absentee) voting in many states across the country present special challenges for exit polling. In the 2008 presidential election cycle, nearly one-third (32.7 percent) of all votes cast were cast early or by mail before Election Day (Mokrzycki, Keeter, & Kennedy, 2009). These developments have led exit pollsters to supplement traditional precinct-based surveying with surveys conducted via telephone in order to maximize coverage. In 2008, Edison Research conducted over 15,000 telephone interviews in 18 states across the country to measure early or mail-in voting www.ccsenet.org/jpl. Polls that excluded wireless telephone users were prone to a pro-Republican bias, underestimating Obama support by about 2 percentage points on average (Keeter, Kiley, Christian, & Dimock, 2009)
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