The Exit Poll Interview

Brief by necessity, the exit poll interview catches a subject in the moments just after a decision has been made, asking a small number of quick questions before the subject moves on. Speed and a light touch matter more here than depth of conversation. Every encounter is necessarily brief, which changes almost everything about how the questions themselves are framed.

Because subjects are approached in passing, often unprepared for the encounter, the opening seconds of the exchange carry outsized importance: a friendly, brief introduction that respects the subject's limited time earns a genuine answer far more often than a lengthy or formal approach would. A stranger approached kindly and briefly is usually far more willing to answer honestly than one approached formally.

The resulting answers are necessarily thin, but aggregated across many quick exchanges they can reveal a pattern that no single longer interview would capture, precisely because the format reaches so many people in such a short space of time. That reach across many brief exchanges is precisely what gives the aggregated pattern its genuine value.