Abstract
Political scientists face challenges sustaining a research agenda—especially one dependent on original data that are expensive and time-consuming to collect. Teaching undergraduate research methods challenges us to connect the clean, abstract data collection process to the messy, imperfect reality. We share our efforts to address both challenges by building the research methods course around the planning, execution, and analysis of local exit polls that we have conducted for every federal election between 1992 and 2018. Exit polls can provide a low cost and high-quality sample of voters that allow political analysis leading to peer-reviewed publications. Students can gain important work experience to build their resumes. Exit polls raise institutional awareness in the community, a goal for many institutions. Perhaps most importantly, student involvement in the research process improves their appreciation of the complexity and nuances of polling and quantitative research. Because ample literature exists on conducting methodologically sound exit polling, we focus on practical tips in training student workers, Election Day supervision, dealing with election administrators and voters, and disseminating results in local and peer-reviewed venues. We offer suggestions for dealing with anticipated changes to the field, such as increased early voting and affective polarization.
We invite readers to email us at matthewth@usca.edu for more details of our own exit polling methods, datasets, and analysis.
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Thornburg, M.P., Botsch, R.E. (2023). Using Exit Polls to Teach Students and Sustain a Scholarly Agenda. In: Butcher, C., Bhasin, T., Gordon, E., Hallward, M.C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Teaching and Research in Political Science. Political Pedagogies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42887-6_22
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