Hurricane Almost Knocked Out Exit Polls

Mark Blumenthal: “What made the exit polls especially challenging this year is that Edison Research, the company that conducts the exit polls on behalf of the National Election Pool (NEP) consortium of the five television networks and the Associated Press, is in Somerville, N.J. It was directly in the path of Hurricane Sandy, and nearly knocked out of business by the storm at a critical moment in its preparations.”

“The biennial exit polls are an extraordinary undertaking under normal circumstances … Altogether, Edison reports that more than 3,000 interviewers collected nearly 120,000 interviews of Americans who voted in 2012… This year, Hurricane Sandy helped make that final week far more challenging than usual.”