The Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University accurately predicted the outcomes of three contested races on Election Day.
Data from the Center’s exit poll, administered by LMU students at polling places throughout Los Angeles County, predicted victory for Ted Lieu in the 33rd Congressional District race and for Ben Allen in the 26th state Senate district just a few minutes after the polls closed. Official results from later in the night showed both candidates won.
In the closely watched Third Supervisorial District race, Prof. Fernando Guerra, director of the Center, declared the race “too close to call” after the polls closed, but noted that Sheila Kuehl had a slight edge in the exit poll, coming in at 51 or 52 percent of the vote. The final tally showed Kuehl the victor with 52.8 percent in her favor.
“Our goal is to be always improving our exit poll to make it as accurate as possible, and we believe we’re continuing to do that,” Guerra said. “This year, we ran into a few challenges when we took the exit poll outside of the city of Los Angeles for the first time, but we were still able to predict the results of these key races.”
Additional data from the exit poll is still being analyzed, but will be available on Thursday, two days after the election. That includes information broken down by demographics, and voter decisions on ballot measures at the state and county level.
