the exit polling supply chain

A WSJ Washington Wire blog post describes the Presidential election exit polling supply chain in New York in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. The Washington Wire blog post highlights the polling firm Edison Research, based in New Jersey. Edison provided the questionnaires used by pollsters who would collect information about the ballots cast. As you might recall, New Jersey and New York were extremely damaged from the hurricane.

Questionnaires

One of the logistical challenges was in printing and delivering the questionnaires used by pollsters around the country. The questionnaires need to be timely, so they are usually shipped one week before the election. Sandy was on track to strike 8 days before the election, so a rush order was placed with the printer. Two thirds of the questionnaires were mailed before Sandy struck and Edison’s election office lost power along with the rest of New Jersey. The rest of the questionnaires were stored for two days until they had to be shipped. Edison printed the mailing labels from their main office, and then UPS shipped the 400 packages to pollsters via Newark Airport. While Edison had redundancy in their system (e.g., the mailing labels could be printed in another facility and a redundant system alerted employees of the change), it only worked because not all of their offices lost power.

Mail Delivery

While Edison relied on UPS to deliver the mail, it is worth noting that USPS mail service continued as normal except for one day during Hurricane Sandy (HT to @EllieAsksWhy).

Gas

Edison relied on having employees implement Plan B. With the gas shortage, it was difficult for employees to get to work when they needed to save gas for other car trips. Organizing car pools was more difficult than normal, since employees could not rely on communicating by email or cell phone.

Hotels

As I mentioned in an earlier post, there were few/no vacancies at hotels that had power, which provided challenges for Edison employees who wanted to work out of a hotel (most offices and homes were without power) or pollsters who needed to travel to different cities to perform exit polling.  I’m not sure how these issues were resolved.

Local transportation to the polls

The NYC public transportation was up and running on election day, so the pollsters could make it there for the big day. The subway reopened with limited runs the Thursday before Election Day and was running as usual on Election Day.

What if Hurricane Sandy came later?

Edison Research managed, but having an 8 day head start was helpful for successfully completing a contingency plan. If the hurricane hit 5 days or closer, the questionnaires would have already been printed and mailed. However, there may have been more challenges with getting pollsters to the polling locations in New York City and other locations (the subway may still have been closed on Election Day).

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• Getting runners to the NYC marathon