What the polls can tell us

Starting with the 1968 elections, a young Michael Montgomery spent election nights with his parents in the WJR studios in the Fisher Building. His dad, Al Montgomery, had a side business calling election results through a statistical model they all worked on. For decades, they projected winners at the state-level, like Governor Bill Milliken over Sander Levin in 1972, and the national one, like President Jimmy Carter over President Gerald Ford in 1976.

Montgomery, now a UM-Dearborn Health and Human Services lecturer, and his parents made their predictions in the same studio that "Hermit's Cave" - a Detroit radio show with eerie sound effects and spooky storytellers that became nationally syndicated in the 1940s - was once broadcast. "As a kid around age 10, I thought it was marvelous. There was a little door that was used to make the radio show's squealing sounds right in that studio," Montgomery says.

Almost 60 years since that 1968 election night, there is a different type of spooky on the horizon. And it has nothing to do with Halloween. With election day less than a week away, it's the distrust in the election process. A recent surveyby the polling firm Gallup found 19% of participants had no trust in the legitimacy of the election result. In 2004, this figure was 6%.

It's been a few decades since Montgomery has been involved in calling a political race and he says he's seen divisions widen significantly in that time due to party differences with issues like civil rights, women's rights and health care access.The electorate became even more divided four years ago, say both Montgomery and Communication Professor Tim Kiska, who's called elections for media outlets for 40 years.

"Sixty years ago, we made these predictive models because news outlets wanted to be the first to give people an update on who won. It was exciting to be in that studio for WJR and be able to report breaking news that was so important that it interrupted a ball game. We didn't know it, but we were helping an expectation that winners and losers would be known on election night or in the early hours of the morning," says Montgomery, whose parents transitioned out of the polling business in the 1980s. "In too-close-to-call elections, it would be better to wait until all ballots were counted, which could take a couple days. However, this expectation of a quick turnaround has been set. If the news is delayed beyond expectation, there is now a likelihood that wild conspiracy theories will take off. So it's imperative to be fast and accurate."

Among concerns of distrust and political polarization, the two professors sat down to discuss what goes into election predictions and calls, along with the importance of polling and why it matters.

Exit polling

We've all seen them - the people who stand 10 feet from the building where we vote and ask for our time to fill out an anonymous survey. But who are they and should we take the time to stop?

Kiska says exit polls are conducted by companies like Edison Research, which does polling on elections across the globe, and that what people say in them today gives insight into election results now and far into the future. "We can talk until we're blue in the face, but what issues were important to voters in a given year?. Abortion? Immigration? We can speculate, but exit polls tell us - directly from the voter through an exit poll survey to fill out on what issues guided their vote," Kiska says.

Kiska says if a voter has time and is asked to fill out an exit poll while leaving their precinct, they should strongly consider taking it.

"The information gained from exit polling is political scientist gold. It's a record of what groups voted for whom - like, did more women vote for Harris or did an older demographic vote for Trump? - that can give insights on election night and for 100 years down the road when we ask ourselves, 'What the hell happened here?,'" Kiska says. "These exit polls give statistics that create a great historical dataset of what happened in an election that's directly from the people - there's nothing better than that."

Precinct polling and forecasting

According to FiveThirtyEight - an ABC News-affiliated website that uses polling as well as economic and demographic data to explore likely election outcomes - the 2024 presidential candidates are tied. But on election night, once the ballots start coming in, predictions can begin to be made by looking at voter trends and the demographic makeup of a precinct. Once adding in other key election precincts, a pattern often emerges to see who's ahead. That's precinct polling.

Montgomery did this work from the late 1960s to the 1980s; Kiska began precinct polling in the 1970s while at the Detroit Free Press - his first presidential election was Gerald Ford vs. Jimmy Carter.

Kiska says it is often done like this: A news outlet sends a representative up to a multitude of voting precincts at 8 p.m., when the polls close, and waits for results to come in. Once they do, the person calls in the voting results from the specific precinct, often selected to get a diverse set of demographics that accurately represents an area. "Let's say we get numbers from 80 selected precincts. If you put them together, you'll get a pretty good indicator on what's happening," he says.New state laws allow absentee ballots to be processed up to eight days before Election Day and counting to begin as early as 7 a.m. on Election Day (although results cannot be released until 8, when the polls close) will also help with making an accurate prediction, Kiska adds. He explains that those numbers - later combined with general election results - will then be analyzed by mathematicians and political scientists using a variety of models to get predictive percentages.

Kiska says the precinct polling principles used today are very similar to when he began this work in the 1970s. But there is one big difference: "The computers may have made all the difference in the world, I'm sure the firepower we have in most laptops is greater than all of NBC News in 1976."

The big question: When it comes to election announcements, is polling trustworthy?

Both professors say yes.

Kiska says no one wants to be wrong. First, as Montgomery also mentioned, errors fuel conspiracy theories. "There's an X factor here that didn't exist decades ago and wasn't as obvious four years ago - people are looking for evidence of shenanigans, even where there isn't any," says Kiska. "We need all the tools we have and to be accurate and efficient with them to avoid the speculation that there's wrongdoing."

Second, if an error is made, it can ruin someone's reputation. Kiska speaks from experience. "In my 40 years calling elections, I called one wrong- but recalled it a couple hours later. The only reason my reputation wasn't destroyed is that I wasn't the only one who got that election wrong. No one wants to experience that. Trust me," Kiska says.

And, lastly, there's a system of checks and balances in place that continues to be improved with lessons learned from every election."There's a lot that happens before somebody presses the button and says, OK, here's the winner. They look at exit poll numbers and then, after 8 p.m. when the polls close, they will look at the precinct poll numbers as they come in to see how close the real numbers are to the predictions. A political scientist is there to run models and check the math. Once there appears to be a clear winner, it goes to the decision desk that wants to see the proof," Kiska says. "There are a lot of people at networks and news desks who look at the numbers before it gets to someone like ABC's David Muir to share that Michigan was projected to be won by whomever."

It's equally critical to election officials that election night predictions be accurate, Kiska adds, too. "I've been doing this work since 1974 and most of these city clerks - I'm talking all across the state - that I've dealt with are really serious folks who wanna get this done right. It's the one big job they do all year - it's like their Super Bowl - and they know that a lot of eyes are on them," he says. "If you are someone who has concerns, I suggest you go up to your local city building and ask to speak with the clerk to learn about election procedures and ballot safeguards."

As for who is going to win, Kiska and Montgomery aren't going to call that. Montgomery says that's up to the public to decide at the polls. "If you want your candidate to win, you need to take action," he says. "Get out and vote."

Story by Sarah Tuxbury