By JULIA OLSEN
julia@du2.byu.edu
After combining the forces of over 700 volunteers, a semester of planning and years of experience from David Magleby, the KBYU/Utah College's Exit Poll accurately called Tuesday's races for the 16th year in a row.
Magelby, professor of political science, Howard Christensen, professor of statistics and J.L. Madrigal, professor of statistics, coordinated a network of student volunteers from almost all the major colleges and universities, to make the process of Tuesday possible.
Magleby and associates led students in a live broadcast Tuesday night on KBYU, revealing the results of Tuesday's exit polls.
'It's like broadcasting your midterm,' Magelby said. 'It makes me a little bit nervous, but the students always arise to the occasion.'
Exit polls help social analysts, like Magelby, to gauge how the public views certain issues and the motivation behind voter's decisions in the ballot boxes.
The political science department devotes an entire class, 317, as does the statistics department, 334 and 534, to the collection and sampling of voters during election time.
The Utah College's exit poll wouldn't happen without the help of five other universities and colleges across Utah. The bulk of volunteers come from BYU, but the other institutions contribute over 200 volunteer, Magleby said.
'Several hundred students are trained and coordinated,' Christensen said.
An exit poll is a simple survey that a volunteer randomly administers to a voter after he/she votes. Although the poll is simple enough to the voter, taking an average of 10 to 15 minutes out of his/her schedule, it is a complicated process of preparation.
Precluding election day, both the political science and statistic supervisors meet and plan so that they can assure a success like Tuesday.
'Planning for election day started at the beginning of the semester. We've met every week to make sure that everything would run smoothly,' said Nathan Carter, 23, a senior from Provo majoring in statistics and working as one of the statistic coordinators.
The statistic department was in charge of deciding in what counties the exit poll was administered. Counties are chosen according to the size of the county and voter demographics.
'We choose counties based on past Democratic vote, in order to make sure that everyone is represented,' said Rachelle Wilkinson, 23, a statistics graduate student from Provo.
After the county is chosen, volunteers go out to work the polls from 7 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Statisticians calculate what makes a random polling according to how many voters are in the county, Wilkinson said.
'We'll approach every fifth voter, for example, and ask them if they would mind answering questions for an exit poll,' Wilkinson said.
Before that can happen, the political science students design multiple questionnaires according to current issues in politics.
'There are six different questionnaires, dealing with different issues. These are all set in order on a pad, so the volunteer just tears off the first one on the stack and hands it to the voter,' said Jason Beal, 25, a public policy graduate student from Herndon, Va.
Beal said that the results from the exit polls are used to analyze Utah opinions on issue. Each political science 317 student will use the statistic generated Tuesday to do research papers.
Not all the effort and planning goes in months before election day. All day Tuesday, volunteers waited to poll voters, seven vans roamed in support and the crisis center offered aid where it was needed.
'We had blankets, bagels, hot chocolate and even socks in our vans. The socks were a first because if you're feet aren't warm, you're just not happy,' Beal said.
The crisis center was designed to moderate people who got sick, didn't show up or had a low voter turn out at their assigned polls.
'If you consider how much time from volunteers were put in today at polls, you can imagine that this whole project takes 100's of hours,' Christensen said.