AP VoteCast

A worker processes mailed-in ballots from Tuesday's primary election, Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020, at the King County Elections headquarters in Renton, Wash., south of Seattle. Washington state has offered voting by mail since 2011. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Problem

Traditional exit polling was becoming more challenging and less reliable.

When exit polls were designed in the 1960s, the vast majority of voters cast their ballots in person, making it easy for exit poll staff to interview them. But changes in voting behavior made this methodology increasingly challenging, if not obsolete.

The number of voters voting absentee or by mail skyrocketed, from 5 percent in 1972 to 70 percent in 2020 during the pandemic and 62 percent in 2024. And because voting behavior can vary by age, race, geography, and other demographic characteristics, those who voted in person were far less representative of the electorate as a whole.

Solution

AP VoteCast offered a more reliable way to survey the American electorate.

Developed in partnership between NORC and The Associated Press and based on decades of research, AP VoteCast delivered surveys of registered voters in every state holding a statewide election. AP VoteCast used an innovative weighting approach to combine a probability-based, state-by-state survey of registered voters with a large opt-in survey of registered voters conducted online. The survey would start several days before Election Day and conclude as polls closed.

The survey captured both the voices of those who choose to vote and registered voters who decided not to cast ballots. To tell the story of the 2024 presidential election, for example, AP VoteCast conducted more than 139,000 interviews with registered voters in all 50 states. Together with AP’s constant updating of vote tabulations and its calling of race outcomes, AP VoteCast provided newsrooms with all the data they needed to tell the comprehensive story of the country’s political races.

Result

VoteCast was key to how AP reported the factors behind voters’ choices.

Major outlets such as Fox News, National Public Radio, PBS NewsHour, Univision News, USA Today Network, and The Wall Street Journal have relied on VoteCast data for their election reporting. As part of its commitment to transparency and continual improvement, AP VoteCast published post-election reports for peer review of its results and methodology on the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research website.