Organizations are beginning to launch so-called entrance polls — remaining polls taken proper earlier than the caucuses. These polls, that are additionally typically generally known as exit polls in non-caucus states, have taken on outsize significance within the minds of politicos.
Right here’s what you might want to know.
There are two of those exit-type polls. The Nationwide Election Pool — made up of ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC — and Edison Analysis conduct one, generally generally known as the N.E.P. Exit Ballot. The A.P.-NORC Middle for Public Affairs Analysis conducts the opposite, known as VoteCast, for The Related Press and Fox Information.
The Nationwide Election Pool ballot is a extra conventional exit ballot that contacts voters exterior polling locations — or within the case of caucuses, earlier than folks enter to caucus. After the 2016 cycle, the N.E.P. ballot added a telephone part in some states, by which some individuals are known as upfront of Election Day with a purpose to attain those that vote early. (There might be no pre-election calling within the N.E.P.’s Iowa caucus entrance ballot, since there isn’t any early voting.)
VoteCast isn’t actually a conventional exit ballot — it surveys voters over the telephone and on-line within the days and hours earlier than the election and asks them how they intend to vote; in some methods it’s extra just like a conventional pre-election ballot.
After 2016, the N.E.P. made some methodological modifications to its ballot to account for academic division within the voters. Meaning its polls this cycle might not all the time essentially be straight corresponding to exit polls from 2016, the final 12 months there was a aggressive Republican main. VoteCast started in 2018, so it doesn’t have 2016 knowledge for comparability.
At The Occasions, we’ll think about the N.E.P. and VoteCast polls within the context of our personal Occasions/Siena polls, different public polling and, after votes are reported, precinct-level returns supplied by the Iowa Republican Celebration.