Students taking Professor Chris Gilbert’s fall-semester course on “Parties and Elections,” which dealt with analyzing and understanding the U.S. electorate, were understandably excited about the 2004 presidential election. When Edison Media Research/Mitofsky International, a research firm retained to conduct exit polls at selected sites through the nation, contacted Gilbert about a poll being conducted in nearby Montgomery, Minn., he announced the opportunity to his class. Rose Baumann, a junior from St. Louis Park, Minn., and Matt Swenson, a junior from Champlin, Minn., volunteered and were selected to work as pollsters. Edison/Mitofsky provided the data collected by its volunteer pollsters to CNN, NBC, Associated Press, and other national news organizations for their election coverage and also used it for research in understanding election results and trends.
After participating in a series of practice interviews and tests to prepare them for the anticipated variety of responses, Baumann and Swenson arrived—early, as is evident in the photo—at the polls in Montgomery on a rainy Election Day. A majority of voters refused to take the time to answer the survey’s 26 questions, according to Baumann, with one voter explaining, “I’m too old for that!” Nevertheless, she says, “Working as a exit pollster was an experience I won’t soon forget. Exit polling allowed me to see and participate in what I had been studying all semester. It also gave me a different perspective on voting because it allowed me to interact with citizens who held different political opinions from mine.”