The Jewish Telegraphic Agency will provide an early indication of tomorrow’s Knesset election results based on a poll of voters taken immediately after they have cast their ballots at scientifically selected polling stations all over the country. The system, known as the Duplicare Poll, was devised by the statistician Hanoch Smith whose early projections of the 1977 elections outcome were amazingly accurate.
Smith will be in charge of tomorrow’s poll on behalf of the Israel Broadcasting Authority. It will be conducted at 30 “dummy” polling booths located next to the official polling stations and manned by student volunteers working in cooperation with the Central Elections Committee.
Voters emerging from the official polling stations will be asked to repeat their vote, in secret, in the “dummy” booth. The latter will close at 7 p.m. The “dummy” results will be computed by Smith and his aides and adjusted statistically for the percentage of voters who cast their ballots as of 7 p.m. This corresponds to 1 p.m. New York time.
The 30 “dummy” stations — five more than in 1977 — are located in the three largest cities — Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa — and in other urban centers. They do not include the kibbutzim and other rural settlements but the early projections will be adjusted statistically to account for the rural, Arab sector and soldiers’ votes. They will be updated throughout the evening as the official results from those areas are received.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
