My Own Election Exit Poll

In many of the 31 states that have early voting, Americans have already cast their ballot for President. And while exit pollsters refuse to reveal their results until voting sites close because they don't want to discourage people from voting, I feel that the sooner we can end this thing the better. So on Oct. 9, I went to Ohio, where people had started voting a week earlier, and stood outside the early-voting site in Cincinnati to conduct America's first 2008 exit poll.

To find out how to do this, I called pollster Frank Luntz. He warned that in addition to excruciating boredom, I'd experience a lot of rejection. But Luntz said that when people turn me down, I should chase them and do a hard sell: "You say, 'Give me 15 seconds. From one human being to another, 15 seconds. I'm here because you're important. I'm here because you matter. They sent me here because you and the people who don't want to answer this question matter more to my magazine than any other Americans. Please teach me. Educate me.'" I bet Luntz doesn't go home alone very often.

Luntz also gave me strict rules. I had to poll 25 people. I had to interview every third person who passed and space out my polling throughout the entire day. I slightly adjusted these rules by showing up at 11 a.m. and asking every person I saw in order to get out of there early. I got a decent sample anyway: half men, half women, half white; a third were over 50, and I'm pretty sure 12% were gay, even if 4% were probably denying it to themselves.

I was told by the very nice election-board workers that in-person early voters come in two varieties: the superinformed and the people Obama supporters pick up off the streets and throw into a van. You can tell the difference mainly by smell. The secretary who sits by the front door told me that I wouldn't see many old people, since they like to vote on Election Day so they can see their friends, get breakfast afterward and make a day of it. This made me think that we should hold elections for old people monthly, letting them vote on things we don't want to think about, like stuff about old people.

Unfortunately, by law every county has only one early-voting site, and Hamilton County's location is in the middle of the inner city, so even though it's a conservative county, 84% of the people I surveyed voted for Barack Obama. The vast majority of early voters submit their ballots by mail, and Hamilton County's envelopes are probably just as strongly pro-John McCain. But I was interested less in which candidate Hamilton County will vote for than in finding out what kind of person votes a month before the election. To my shock, none of them told me they were voting early "to avoid old people." Equally surprising, no one found that question to be strange. The voters were, however, dubious about my professionalism when I asked whether "people sometimes call them anal"--though 36% said yes. Also, 36% had already done some Christmas shopping and their taxes, 44% applied early admission to college, and one-third had stamps on them. Two even said they don't carry stamps because they pay all their bills online. One woman was saving her I VOTED sticker so she could wear it on Election Day. If all Americans were like early voters, we'd have a perfectly run country that would get beat up by all the other countries.

Because I'm not a professional pollster, my results, much like my questions, were unusual. For instance, while 32% of voters said the economy was their No. 1 issue, 12% chose Supreme Court appointments, 4% cared most about health care, and a shocking 56% fell under the category "I forgot to ask that question."

From what I could tell, early voters are the best-informed, smartest, most responsible members of society. Twenty percent of them were supporting their candidate even before he decided to run; 12% planned to spend Nov. 4 volunteering at the polls. When I asked if they wanted to vote now for the next American Idol winner, 80% told me they don't watch the show. Two graduated from high school a year early. One was voting early so she "would be able to avoid crowds and take my time and read all the propositions carefully." These people were making such well-informed decisions that none of them said they were nervous that something would happen before the election to make them regret their vote. "Obama would have to eat a baby onstage with condiments and not wash his hands after," one told me. Another thought about my question for a minute and said, "Nothing could happen that I couldn't rationalize."

We should have held this election a year ago.

For the results of Joel Stein's exit poll, go to time.com/steinpoll