USU students participate in exit polls
Sixty-six Utah State University volunteer students will be helping with the KBYU/Utah Colleges Exit Poll on Nov. 2.
The project was developed by Brigham Young University and is the only exit poll in the country run by students, according to the KBYU/Utah Colleges Exit Poll fact sheet. The exit poll will ask randomly selected voters from randomly selected voting places to answer questions about the election. With the results, it is possible to predict which candidate will win as soon as the polls have been closed.
According to the fact sheet, eight universities across the state are involved with the project. It estimates that 800 students will be interviewing voters at 90 randomly selected poll stations throughout the state.
This year, the survey will be available in Spanish to include the “growing number of Latino voters,” according to the fact sheet.
Kristina Mecham, responsible for the poll at BYU, said the exit poll started in 1982, and since then has helped to understand how Utahns vote. The results are accurate, she said, and the margin of error usually varies from 1 to 2 percent.
“Last year in the election, for mayor of Salt Lake City, the difference between results of the exit poll and the official outcome was just 0.2 percent,” Mecham said.
The questions take in consideration several aspects, such as race and party, to make the result more accurate, she said.
People interested in the results of the election can watch the BYU channel, she said. KBYU will receive the information from all polling places and call in the results throughout the day, Mecham said. KBYU will announce the final result one minute after the polls have been closed at 8 p.m., she said.
At USU, the political science honors society, Pi Sigma Alpha, is responsible for the poll. Steve Stoddard, president of Pi Sigma Alpha, said the honors society has been helping the poll as part of a service project for 16 years.
“This is probably the most political service project we can do. Being a part of the exit poll is already a long tradition for us,” Stoddard said.
William Furlong, a professor in the political science department and advisor for Pi Sigma Alpha, said it is great that students can participate in a project like this because it gets them more involved with the political process. Exit polls have been a tradition in American politics for more than 100 years, he said.
Shannon Peterson, also a professor in the political science department, said the exit poll provides important data for the students at USU.
“With the results, students can look at the trends in Utah and find out how Utahns voted for certain issues demographically,” she said. “This way, students can really understand politics in our state.”
Peterson said analyzing the data afterwards is an important part of the process. Despite the fact that the majority of students assisting in the poll are from the political science department, people from other departments are helping as well, she said.
Stoddard said those students helping in the exit polls were trained by BYU to conduct the interviews in a way that does not invade the privacy of voters. The training included an hour of videos, lectures and filling out forms, he said.
Furlong said the poll is conducted with voters as they leave voting stations. Voters will be asked to fill out a survey sheet with questions about why they voted the way they did, he said.
-acantunes@cc.usu.edu