What are exit polls? How they work and what they mean heading into election night

After months of campaigning and a tight race between the candidates, Election Day is finally here. And as polls close and votes are being tallied across the county, Americans will begin the wait to determine outcomes from local and national elections.

One tool used to try to make sense of the madness are exit polls, which are usually conducted as voters leave, or exit their voting location. According to NBC News, it is the only national survey of known voters in the country.

The polls help news organizations like USA TODAY understand what results flowing in could mean as the night progresses. Although these are not official results from counts, they at least help give a sense of which candidates could be in the lead.

With election night coming up, here's how exit polling works and what these polls could mean.

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Who conducts exit polls?

Edison Research has been conducting the exit polls since 2003, according to NBC News. These polls are done on behalf of the National Election Pool, a group of networks that include ABC News, CBS News, CNN and NBC News.

These four organizations pool together their resources to conduct one exit poll operation, then each organization independently analyzes and reports the results from the poll.

What questions are asked for the exit poll?

Various questions are asked of voters during the exit poll, such as who they voted for president and their votes for candidates among other local and statewide races, according to NBC News.

Other questions are also asked of voters that are slightly more broad, including: “What is the most important issue to your vote?”

Voters are also asked to answer demographic questions like race, age and gender.

How are exit polls conducted?

According to Edison Research, the polls are conducted using one of three methods. For by-mail voters, Edison Research says it reaches them through phone, email and text.

For in-person early voters and election-day voters, interviewers are stationed outside polling places to ask these survey questions in person. They also say that exit polls are anonymous, as there is no way to link answers to an exit poll to a specific person.

How many people are interviewed for exit polls?

NBC News says that the national poll will include about 20,000 interviews, including in-person on Election Day. Moreover, this total number includes 1,500-2,500 respondents in Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin, respectively.

Edison Research says it managed to reach more than 100,000 voters in 2020, including 30,000 people by phone before Election Day.

Fernando Cervantes Jr. is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected] and follow him on X @fern_cerv_.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What are exit polls? What they could mean on election night