BBC 6分钟英语学习 民意调查是否准确？

English from BBC Learning English. Hello.

This is six minute

English from BBC, learning English. I'm Neil, and I'm Sam.

Predicting the future is not easy, but that's exactly the job of opinion pollsters, researchers, who ask people

questions to discover what they think about certain topics.

Often their aim is predicting which political party will win in an election by asking members of the public how they intend to vote.

But predicting the future is never 100% accurate, and opinion polls don't always get it right.

In 2016, few pollsters predicted a victory for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in the US Presidential election and in the 2020 US elections.

Most Poles predicted Trump would lose to Joe Biden by a much larger amount than he actually did.

These mistakes sometimes called MS. fires, when things do not work in the way intended, have damaged the reputation of opinion.

Pollsters in this program will be taking a look into the opinion polling industry, and of course, learning some useful vocabulary is well But 1st, I have a question for you, sam.

And it's about another time when the opinion polls got it wrong.

Few posters predicted that Britain would vote to leave the European Union in the 2016 Brexit referendum, which in the end it did.

But what was the final split between those who voted to leave and those who wanted to remain?

Was it A 51? Leave to 49, remain.

B 52? Leave to 48, remain, or see 52 remain.

02:48 Leave. I think it was B 52 voted to leave and 48 to remain.

OK, sam Ill reveal the answer at the end of the program.

One of the biggest polling companies was founded by George Gallop.

Born in 1901 on a farm in Iowa, gallop was a student of journalism.

He wanted to know people's opinion on a range of subjects, and came up with a simple idea Why not try asking them?

Here's g Elliot Morris, a data journalist from The Economist, explaining more to BBC World Service program, more or less.

And he publishes his dissertation on this, how to measure what people want, basically.

And he gets tired by a much bigger advertising agency in New York called Young and Rubicam, and they basically give him A-A blank check to do their research, to figure out how to call people, how to talk to them, to figure out if they remember or like to certain product, basically, to figure out early methodologies in advertising.

And then by 1931 or so, he's wondering, well, if it works for toothpasste and Findy to and George Gallop tried to figure out what customers wanted to buy.

If you figure something out, you finally'd at it's and ads a solution to a problem.

After thinking about it a lot later, he was hired by a New York advertising agency to find out peoples opinion of consumer products.

And like the a atts ands and and soft drinks, george was given a blank check, an a limited amount of money, and freedom to do his job.

At this time, polling was focused on consumer preferences, not politics.

But asking people about their their theirses is a lot more than that than asking them about toothpaste.

Making accurate election predictions depends on polling a sample group of people who accurately represent the population as a whole.

One of the reasons for pollsters failure to predict trumps election in 2016 is that they didn't ask enough white, non college educated voters.

So polling is a very complex process, one which is never totally reliable, according to g Elliott Morris, speaking again here to BBC World Services, more or less, if people were understanding this process that's generating all these poles, then they would understand polls is less sort of precise tools, tools that definitely can't offer the laser like predictive accuracy we've come to expect from them, then the difference between pollings, expectations and performance wouldn't be so stark.

Opinion polls can estimate the outcome of an election, but they can't give us laser like accuracy.

If you describe something as laser like, you mean it's very accurate and focused like a laser.

If people understand how hard it is to predict the future, they might be more realistic about how accurate opinion polls can be.

Then differences between a prediction and the final result wouldn't be so stark, obvious and easily visible or harsh.

Predicting the future is difficult, otherwise everyone would be a lottery winner by now.

Maybe it's not opinion polls that are broken, but our desire to know

the future that's the problem. OK, it's time to reveal the answer to my

question about the Brexit referendum. I said the final result was 52% for leave and 48% for remain, which was the correct answer.

And another example of an opinion poll misfire, a situation where something does not work as intended.

OK, let's recap the rest of the vocabulary from this program about opinion pollsters, people who conduct polls asking the public their opinion on particular subjects, especially politics.

If you figure something out, you finally understand it or find the solution to a problem after thinking long and hard about it.

If someone gives you a blank check, you have unlimited money and freedom to complete a task.

When you describe something as laser like, you mean that it's very accurate and precise.

And finally, the adjective stark has several meanings, including obvious, harsh and plain.

Once again, our 6 min are up.

Bye for now. Bye bye. 6 min English from BBC, learning English.

扫码查看听力音频