在这个全国选举季节, hardly a day goes by without mention in the media of how 候选人 and political parties are faring in the public opinion polls. 我们生活在一个民意调查和民意调查机构主导政治格局的时代. 我们很多人都想知道是谁在上, 是谁下, who can move the country forward and who just doesn’t have the skills to solve national problems. We also want to know what policy issues are upper most in the minds of the voters and whether those issues blend in with our concerns.
Public opinion polls and the individuals to perform the complex task of determining the views and the preferences of Americans are in the business of prognostication, 预测政治的未来. But this process of prognostication is fraught with numerous pitfalls as trying to accurately find what Americans are thinking and who they support at any one time during a campaign is a difficult task. 近年来, pollsters have had numerous problems determining with a degree of certainty who the American voter supports and why. The problems with determining with a degree of certainty during the last two presidential elections has led to many Americans losing faith in polls and charges that the individual pollster is blinded by partisan concerns to show a particular candidate ahead in the polls when the reality is quite different.
在大多数民意调查中, the pollster will develop a statistical program that seeks to categorize the potential voters according to a series of socio-economic-political characteristics that would provide an insight into the general voting public. 这些特征通常是年龄, 性, 宗教信仰, 收入水平, 教育, 居住地, 政党身份和就业. 下一步, 最难的是, is to contact by phone what the pollsters feel are a representative sampling of the American public in a specific time frame. But rather than contact thousands and thousands of Americans with these characteristics, 民意调查人员将联系2人的抽样组,000–3,000 people and present them with a series of questions that not only determines their viewpoints but also identifies which candidate they prefer to vote for in the upcoming election. 通常, the poll will have a disclaimer that the accuracy is + or - a certain percentage, 通常2 - 3%. 免责声明不是为了逃避对错误的索赔, but rather to alert the public to the difficulty of arriving at complete certainty.
The difficulty of arriving at certainty is compounded by factors such as what type of phone is being called — a landline or a cell phone, 被访者的回答是否真实, and whether the characteristics used to develop the poll are indeed reflective of the American public. 在2016年和2020年的总统选举中, numerous pollsters were criticized for “undercounting” voter support for Donald Trump, 尤其是他在美国农村的选民基础. 尽管民调结果相差不大, 在势均力敌的全国竞选中, 不正确的确定性会产生一种错误的自信感. The campaign of Hillary Clinton in 2016 was influenced by a misreading of the polls that had her as the predicted winner, only to find out that Trump was the victor in key battleground states like Michigan. 自2020年以来, pollsters have refined their statistical models and developed what they believe is a more accurate count of the Trump support that will provide a clearer picture of the American voting pubic. 此外, one way that polling has changed in recent years is that organizations that conduct the surveys have moved to online questionnaires that reflect the reality of increased Internet use, 尤其是在千禧一代中.
One of the more serious problems associated with polling and pollsters is that the field is crowded with an ever-growing number of organizations conducting polls. 除了更知名的民意调查，如盖洛普, 哈里斯, 和538年, 一些新的民意调查组织，如YouGov, 早间咨询公司和益普索已经声名狼藉. 也, 许多学院和大学都在做民意调查，比如爱默生学院, 马奎特法学院, 昆尼皮亚克大学, 锡耶纳(与 纽约时报)、蒙茅斯大学(Monmouth University)(与the 华盛顿邮报》) and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst have developed a reputation for accuracy. The reason for the growth of polling organization is that 候选人 at the national, state and local level spend millions of dollars to hire pollsters who they believe will provide them with an accurate and up to date analysis of how their candidate is doing, what issues to accent and how to improve the image of the candidate to the voting public.
从现在到11月11日的全国大选. 5, 候选人, the media and the American people will be watching closely to see how the various races for public office will play out. Because all polls have a margin of error and polling has in the recent past been problematic, 人们会对谁上台表示怀疑，这是可以理解的, 是谁下, who can move the country forward and who lacks the skills to solve critical national problems. The key question is how influential will the polling results be in how Americans cast their ballots? Should one candidate be ahead in the polls by a large margin it could convince voters not to participate, while a close polling result could bring out more voters to support their candidate. 接下来的问题是，独立选民将如何投票. Since Independents are not wedded to either political party and now make up the largest voting bloc, their movement from one party candidate to another makes prognostication difficult. 无论民意调查对全国选举的影响如何, it is certain that will remain an integral part of the electoral process in our country. We Americans have this ingrained desire to find out how their candidate is doing, and political polling prognostication remains one of the best ways of determining the ups and downs of the individuals running for public office.