exit polls 2010

At the moment, exit polling data will be processing through news sites and blogs worldwide and give hints as to who is the victor in yesterday's election. No official data regarding the polls was released before 5pm today so any official exit poll data you think you've received before that time today is most probably false.

The exit pollsters release no data to the networks that pay for it until 5:00 p.m. Eastern time, and the networks do not report full tabulations until the polls close. However, certain pieces of data such as the results to issue questions could start to be reported on air at that time, and results about who is ahead or behind often leak before that time. However, you won't see an officially tabulated exit poll result until after the polls close in any given state. And as Mark Blumenthal wrote in 2004, "those leaked exit polls really don't tell us much more about the outcome of the race than the telephone polls we were obsessing over just a few hours ago. Even if we wanted to call a race on unweighted, unfinished, mid-day exit polls alone (something the networks will not do), we would need to see differences of 10-15 points separating the candidates to be 95% certain of a winner."