Elections can tell us the number of people who voted for a candidate or ballot initiative, but not how those voters made up their minds. To understand voting behavior, experts turn to exit polling, a careful and methodical process of surveying voters as they leave polling places. For the 2024 election, many Baltimore County voters were greeted outside their polling place by UMBC students conducting the UMBC Battleground Exit Poll, a hands-on educational experience created by Ian Anson, an associate professor in political science.
For students, this was an opportunity to participate in the high-stakes world of Maryland politics. For their professor, it was an opportunity to see his students successfully draw on classroom skills as they engaged with the community.
“Students really found their voices,” says Anson. “Students who I felt were pretty reserved and quiet in class were reaching out to voters in very bold ways and finding that perfect pitch to get them to take the poll. “
Going beyond the classroom context
Anson, who also serves as associate director of the new UMBC Institute of Politics (IoP), collaborated with students to design and implement the Battleground Exit Poll. He worked with over 50 undergraduate students enrolled in his upper-level American voting behavior class to develop bias-free questions for the survey. The Battleground Exit Poll is the second exit poll Anson has developed with undergraduate students. During the 2018 midterm primaries, Anson’s voting and polling class students designed the UMBC Retriever Exit Poll.
“My guiding philosophy is to create applied-learning projects that have legs—that go beyond the classroom context,” said Anson. “I want students to experience how political science theories and applications impact communities.”
and Mileah K. Kromer, director of the Institute of Politics. (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)
Understanding the data
The poll gauged the attitudes of 1,119 Baltimore County voters who cast their ballots in person during early voting and on Election Day. Voters answered questions about various topics, including the presidential, U.S. Senate, and congressional elections; adding “The Right to Reproductive Freedom” amendment to the Maryland Constitution; and the economy.
Among the findings, the data showed that the top five issues Baltimore County voters said they considered when making their voting decisions were abortion, inflation, the trustworthiness of politicians, civil rights, and immigration.
There were some surprising results hidden beneath the surface of these toplines—Anson’s students discovered in their conversations with voters a shared sense of values—regardless of party preference or votes cast (60 percent of Baltimore County voters voted for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and 36 percent for Donald Trump and J.D. Vance).
“Everybody I talked to—both for Harris and for Trump—were saying similar things for what they wanted for the country,” says Ayaan Rizvi, a first-year student in UMBC’s Sondheim Public Affaris Scholars program, who plans to major in political science. “It’s really interesting to see the mental calculus that goes on in people’s brains when they make a choice of how they will vote.”
Rizvi says most voters said they wanted themselves and others to live comfortably and to be able to live peacefully in their communities.
A highlight for Anson is watching his polling students gain a perspective into elections that goes deeper than what they can get in the classroom or from watching the news.
“We often see ourselves as this very divided country,” says Anson. “But when you go to the polling place and stand there for four hours, you get a much different glimpse. I think students really left the experience feeling the warmth of that.”
The UMBC Battleground Exit Poll was covered widely by state and local news outlets, including CBS, ABC DC News Now, Fox 45 News, and WBAL-TV.
Learn more about UMBC’s Department of Political Science.
Tags: CAHSS, CAHSS_research, PoliticalScience, Research
