Wake Forest students conducting an exit pollWake Forest students conducting an exit poll

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WFU First-year Seminar Conducts Exit Poll

In 2008, a group of first-year Wake Forest students conducted an exit poll within our home county [Forsyth]. We successfully predicted the races for president, senate, governor, & local bonds, all posted within an hour of polls closing.

Here's our presidential results and prediction. See our Results page for full results and predictions.

Presidential results

Webpage history

To preserve all of our results, the exit poll is now hosted on my webpage. We have had two previous student designed webpages which have hosted our results, including where our first predictions were posted on election night. One of these was lost due to hosting issues, but you can check out this one.

Exit polls

Exit polls began in 1967 when Warren Mitofsky, the executive director of CBS News, conducted an exit poll for Kentucky’s governor election. Five years later, he conducted the first national exit poll in 1972 and predicted Nixon's victory. Today, only one organization, Edison-Mitofsky, conducts exit polls for the media. Their precise statistical method is proprietary and their data is only released to their customers, typically major media companies, who (eventually) pass some of the data along to the public.

We know of only a few groups who have conducted exit polls. If you have, or know of one, please contact Jason Parsley (parslerj AT wfu Dot edu).