Exit polls: how reliable are they?

Exit polls: how reliable are they?

In half an hour, immediately after the polls close, pollster Ipsos will publish the exit poll. It is a first and important indication of the national election results and turnout.

An exit poll is a shadow election, carried out on behalf of the NOS. Poll workers ask voters to cast another vote after voting. This year Ipsos polled at 62 polling stations the voice of thousands of eligible voters. These polling stations “together form a good cross-section of all polling stations in the Netherlands,” according to Ipsos.

Read more about polls: Who is behind the polls? 9,500 opinions, a bite of soup and a voucher from Bol.com.

Due to this large sample, an exit poll is usually quite reliable. However, deviations of one or two seats occur regularly for one or more parties. For example, in 2017 the VVD received two seats fewer than predicted and GroenLinks could count on an extra parliamentary seat.

In corona year 2021, the deviation between the exit poll and the actual election result was greater. Then D66 even lost three seats compared to the poll. Pollster Ipsos attributed the overestimation of D66 to, among other things, the high number of postal votes due to the pandemic and the varying willingness of voters to participate in the shadow election.

Welcome to this blog

In this blog NRC the exit polls of the House of Representatives elections and other relevant news surrounding the elections. More than thirteen million people were allowed to elect a new House of Representatives today. Voters can choose from a total of 26 parties. The polling stations close at 9 p.m. and the first exit polls are expected.

According to the latest national turnout figures at 7:45 p.m., 66 percent of eligible voters have voted. The figures are slightly lower than for the 2017 elections. We make the comparison with the 2017 House of Representatives elections, because in the last elections in 2021, voters were able to vote over several days due to corona measures. In addition, the elderly and vulnerable could vote by letter.

Earlier today, Forum for Democracy announced that it was definitively canceling its results evening due to security risks. FVD leader Thierry Baudet was attacked twice during his campaign. In addition, the party leader of the youth party LEF, who was arrested on Tuesday evening after disrupting the final debate at NOS, has been released. However, he is not allowed to come near the House of Representatives tonight.

Read our previous blog to find out how election day went so far.