Students from Brigham Young University and Westminster College will be conducting an exit poll for the Salt Lake City mayoral race. The volunteer interviewers will be at all of the Salt Lake polling places, distributing exit poll questionnaires.
In addition to asking about vote choice for mayor, this year’s questionnaire contains items on Referendum 1, Rocky Anderson’s job approval, the proposed skybridge over Main Street, which candidate voters supported in the primary, the 2008 presidential election and questions about voter satisfaction, especially relating to the new electronic voting equipment.
The results of the poll will be available immediately upon the closing of the polls at 8:00 p.m. on Election Day. KBYU will broadcast the results as a part of its hour-long program on the election. This broadcast is available for other interested stations. For more information, contact Mark Phillips at mark.phillips@byu.edu. Subsequent news releases with full analyses of the data will be available at http://exitpoll.byu.edu and also by special request. Reporters interested in doing stories on the 2007 exit poll should call (801) 422-4298. You may also contact Brad Jones at brad.csed@gmail.com for copies of the exit poll questionnaires and to make requests for customized analyses.
Historically, the poll has proven very accurate. In the 2003 Salt Lake mayoral race, the Utah Colleges Exit Poll came within half of a percentage point of the actual totals. In a few instances, races in Utah have been too close to call given the margins of error associated with the sampling. More details about the poll are available in this fact sheet.
Writer: Brad Jones
