As with every election, shortly after noon ,some exit poll numbers began to circulate on social networks. A group of consulting companies – Management & Fit, Intelligence Analytica SA ,and Rouvier & Asoc – denied the surveys that went viral in their name and clarified that these supposed data were “false.”
The false exit boxes went viral mainly through a WhatsApp message with the numbers of Sergio Massa (Unión por la Patria) and Javier Milei (La Libertad Avanza) at the national level and in the province of Buenos Aires.
Minutes after they spread, the managing partner of Management & Fit, Mariel Fornoni, declared on her X account – formerly Twitter – that they were false. “We clarify that at Management & Fit ,we do not conduct any exit polls. The data circulating on social networks is fake.”
Marcelo Escolar, president of Intelligence Analytica SA, did the same. “I want to inform you as the president of Intelligence Analytica SA, that so far we have not conducted any exit polls. The results circulating on social networks are not true,” and he concluded: “We have not conducted exit polls .”
From Rouvier & Asoc they are strong. The exit data circulating in the name of @RouvierAsoc are FALSE,” they tweeted.
What are exit boxes?
Exit polls are surveys conducted by political consultants on election day to people who have just left the establishments where they voted. The data collected through this service cannot be published in any media, because otherwise, it would violate national law.
In Argentina, article 71 of the National Electoral Code prohibits “acts of public proselytism” and “publication or dissemination of surveys and projections of election results during the election and up to three hours after its closing.” It was only at 9 o’clock that Sunday night that the broadcasting of the numbers was legal.
The rule crohibits the publication of polls about closing to prevent the election process from being changed before it is completed, because even if the election is close to 6 pm, there are districts where they tend to take a little longer.
Despite the popularity of exit polls, they are not considered official polls or surveys, because they can have many methodological errors and their numbers can differ from the final results. In other words, there is no way to confirm that the responses of those consulted coincided with what was done in the dark room.
