Garbage Bin

LA Votes is a series of exit polls in Los Angeles known for the use of a breakthrough sampling methodology – the racially stratified homogenous precinct approach – and is the largest per-capita exit poll in the nation. Since 2005, StudyLA has conducted fifteen LA Votes projects, resulting in some of the most accurate exit poll results for major elections in Los Angeles.

2020 Presidential Primary Election Exit Poll and Vote Center Study

On March 3, 2020, StudyLA will lead over 250 students in field research. Students will assist with data collection, data entry, data cleaning, field supervision, and other tasks as needed. Students must be available for the entirety of the day.

Check out the LA Votes information sheet, available here.

Data Collection

The 2020 presidential primary election exit poll will examine at-poll voters who vote on Election Day. Student field researchers will be located at 50 randomly selected vote centers in Los Angeles County. They will randomly select voters to complete a self-administered survey in English or Spanish with questions on major races and the new voter experience. Student field supervisors will collect completed surveys throughout the day. Data entry, cleaning, and analysis will begin on the same day as survey distribution.

A second component of the project will be assessing the quality of vote centers. For this part of the project, the focus is the vote center, not the voter. Student field researchers will complete vote center quality checklists at all 1,000 vote centers in the county. StudyLA will give real-time updates on how many vote centers student field researchers have visited throughout the day. Data entry will begin on the same day.

Field Research Registration and Training Requirements

• Complete the student field researcher registration form
• Complete the CITI human subjects training program. If you have already completed this training, simply login to access your completion certificate.
  
  • Visit this website
  • Click the "Register" button at the top right-hand corner
  • Choose "Loyola Marymount University" as your affiliation. Create your username and password.
  • Select the "Social and Behavioral Research – Basic/Refresher" (17 modules) and Social & Behavioral Responsible Conduct of Research" (9 modules) courses. These courses take on average 1-1.5 hours to complete. Once you complete the courses, you will receive your completion certificate.
  • Please email your completion report or completion certificate to Alejandra Alarcon at alejandra.alarcon@lmu.edu by Friday, February 6, 2020.
    • Here is an example of the completion report
    • Here is an example of the completion certificate
• Attend an in-person training session. The training session will be held during class time. Check with your professor for the date and time of your presentation.

Resources

• See the letter to request an excused absence from class, here
• Register to vote and request an absentee ballot, here
• Learn how to get informed and get involved, here
• See a complete Election 2020 presidential election calendar, here

Additional Reading Material

• Explaining Exit Polls (AAPOR)
• Why Different Election Polls Sometimes Have Different Results (Zukin)
• Controversies in Exit Polling: Implementing a Racially Stratified Homogenous Precinct Approach (Barreto, Guerra, Marks, Nuno, Woods)

Questions

Alejandra Alarcon
Research Communications Coordinator, StudyLA
310.338.1819
alejandra.alarcon@lmu.edu