How to read exit polls

To illustrate how exit poll results should be read, let's use hypothetical results as an illustration.

The data is available in two formats: A graphic visualization and as a table.

In the examples to the left, the first column of numbers shows how many people who voted today fell into each category.

In our example, that means 18 percent of all voters were between the ages of 18-29.

Of those voters, 62 percent voted for the Democratic Party candidate (colored in blue), 33 percent voted for the Republican Party candidate (colored in red) and another 5 percent voted for a candidate that did not belong to either party.

Also you may notice some categories such as "Vote by Income" and "Vote by Age" appear more than once. In those cases, the data has been rolled up differently. While the data may vary among the tables, all of the tables are correct.

For instance, "Vote by Income" might show up three times, with different breakdowns: less or more than $50,000; less or more than $100,000; and less than $50,000, $50,000-$100,000 and more than $100,000.