A national election is a complicated thing — with polls, votes, recounts and the ever-present “too close to call” blurring the results. Here’s a few tips and facts to make some sense of it:

Pay attention to exit polls

• Exit polls are interviews with voters after they have cast their votes at their polling places. Voters at a scientifically selected sample of polling places will be interviewed that collectively represent a state or the nation. To avoid affecting voter turnout, officials cannot disclose which precincts they will survey.

• The purpose of exit polling is to understand how the issues relate to different demographics of voters and what local, regional and national issues affected the demographics’ voting decisions. The data reveals the demographic breakdown by age, gender, ethnicity, education and political identity.

• Interviewing starts when the polls open in the morning, continues throughout the day until about an hour before they close at night.

• This year, exit polls will be supplemented with telephone surveys in 13 states, including Iowa. The telephone surveys will take place shortly before the election and voters are asked the same questions that are asked in the exit polls. Results will be combined with those of the Election Day voters.

• In Iowa, voters will be polled about their choice for president and the Senate, but Iowa law does not allow exit polling at a polling place, but does permit polling within 300 feet of any door with access to the polling place.

Making the call

• The major news organizations disbanded the Voter News Service — a pool created in 1964 to collect election results and broadened in the early 1990s — to conduct exit polls, after its failure in 2000 and 2002. The news organizations created the National Election Pool, which hired Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, and many steps have been taken to ensure greater accuracy of exit polling.

• ABC News, Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Fox News and NBC News hired Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International to conduct the official exit polls for the 2004 elections.

— Michelle Kalkhoff

Sources: www.exit-poll.net, The Associated Press