Halalan 2007: ABS-CBN & Pulse Asia Exit Polls

Pulse Asia started conducting its exit polls as soon as voters finished casting their votes Monday for the national and local elections and returned to their homes, ABS-CBN News learned.

While the counting of ballots and precincts are being finished in precincts nationwide and canvassing of votes have started in some of the cities and municipalities in the country, Pulse Asia has also started tallying the results of the exit polls that is a project of the survey firm and ABS-CBN.

The two teamed up to deliver the exit polls for the senatorial, congressional, and the local bets in 79 provinces in the country.

Pulse Asia Executive Director Ana Tabunda describes exit polls as similar to surveys. She said that as any other random sample survey. "We select a random sample but this time that of registered voters who actually voted," she explained.

The survey firm is targeting 10,620 completed response forms to be filled up by respondents from 79 provinces less than a day after polling precincts have closed.

In the conduct of the exit polls, Tabunda said "we choose to interview the respondents at the households because of our culture." She said the survey firms method of conducting the exit polls is different from what polling firms in countries like the US use where pollsters randomly select precincts then go to the precincts to randomly select voters that they will interview as they are coming out.

She explained that there is nothing illegal with conducting interviews outside the precincts. However, she said that a respondent’s answer may not be as accurate in public.

"There will be a tendency for the people who voted along with you to make their own comments as you are being interviewed and the respondent might not indicate the people he voted for if its done in public", she said

She added that the presence of the military, the police, or even local officials in the area could affect the answers. "They might not be willing to disclose who they voted for in the presence of all these other people. That is why we conduct surveys, interviews in the privacy of their homes", Tabunda said.

The process of getting respondents

Tabunda described the conduct of the exit polls in an interview with abs-cbnNEWS.com Friday.

She said said Pulse Asia would choose 15 respondents per precinct in urban districts and 12 respondents per precinct in rural districts. Once a house is randomly chosen, the interviewer randomly selects voter. An indelible ink on the voter’s finger will indicate that he has voted. If he or she is registered and did not vote, the interview would still push through.

Once a voter was selected, a form that is similar to a printed COMELEC ballot is given. The respondent will be instructed by the interviewer to fill in the names that the repondents wrote inside the polling booth. The voter will then fold the form and drop it in a box that is sealed.

"It will be very evident for the respondent that it cannot be opened easily", she said.

The pollig firm's executive director said Pulse Asia would deploy 1,000 workers to conduct the exit polls. They would start randomly choosing the respondents at 9 a.m. election day. The cut-off time for the results of the exit polls will be 9 p.m. of the same day.

The results would then be encoded in a software progam made by Taylor Nielsen Software (TNS) after which a group of statisticians will then analyze the results for accuracy and completion.

Tabunda said the results may be skewed because some individuals from the socio-economic class of A-B-C tend to refuse answering exit polls. The problem with these refusals, is that the results may not mirror the proportion of voters in the region.

"We will be flagging areas where the response is possibly not as accurate as could be. That will help us make decisions as to what level we read. We assure to have the NCR reading, balanced Luzon reading, Visayas reading, and Mindanao reading"

The NCR exit polls are expected to be released Tuesday morning while the complete tally of the exit polls for the country may be complete by Thursday morning.

Tabunda said problems and limitations exist such as the exit polls might have difficulty getting respondents. Tabunda cited that some voters might refuse to participate in the exit polls. Another problem that would arise would be that a lot of voters do not immediately return home after voting.

"It was the particular problem in 2004. Apparently, people in urban areas went to shopping centers and stayed there. It’s a big problem, sometimes we might hit a house when the occupant has gone home to a province where he or she is registered and so we hit a house that is empty."