Explaining the why of Election Day — at the moment polls close
In the weeks after Election Day, the U.S. Census Bureau conducts a nationwide study on voters and nonvoters, examining demographics and voter trends. This addition to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey is widely cited benchmark data and is viewed as an authoritative assessment of the electorate.
It takes weeks for the Census Bureau to conduct this research on households that are part of the Current Population Survey. When it arrived in April 2019 following the 2018 midterm elections, it showed that AP VoteCast delivered — in real time on Election Day — an accurate picture of the composition of the electorate by age, gender, race/ethnicity and education.