For some minutes, all was quiet in the street. Then from across the street someone came walking.It looked like a man of middle height, dressed in a big raincoat, a soft hat and rubber-soled boots or s 题目和参考答案——精英家教网——
成绩波动大？难提高？听顶级名师视频辅导，
& 题目详情
For some minutes, all was quiet in the street. Then from across the street someone came walking.It looked like a man of middle height, dressed in a big raincoat, a soft hat and rubber-soled boots or shoes, and making little sound while walking. No one was in sight. It was a street with two rows of about fifty small houses and there were three lamps on either side. The lamp nearest to the child’s house could be seen clearly, but the others were almost hidden by the smoky air. A car passed the end of the street and its lights showed faintly，but clearly enough to show the smooth skin of a woman’s face. The car disappeared as the woman, wrapped up in her coat, reached the doorway of the child’s house. She put a key in the lock quickly, pushed the door open and stepped inside, then closed the door without looking round. She began to breathe hard.She leaned against the door for a moment, then straightened up as if with an effort, and walked towards the door of the front room, the passage leading to the kitchen, and the narrow staircase. She hesitated outside the door, then went up the stairs quickly but with hardly a sound. There was enough light from the narrow hall to show the four doors leading off a small landing(楼梯平台). She pushed each door open in turn and shone a torch inside, and the light fell upon beds, walls, furniture, a bathroom hand-basin, a mirror which fla but this was not what the woman was looking for. She turned away and went downstairs, and hesitated again at the foot of the stairs, then turned towards the kitchen. Clearly there was nothing there, or in the small washroom that she wanted. T the front room and a smaller one next to it. She opened the front room door. After a moment, she saw the child’s bed and the child1.The lights of the car passing the end of the street showed that ______A.a woman was driving the carB.someone was standing by a street lampC.a man and a woman were walking up the streetD.a woman was walking by herself up the street2.After the woman closed the front door, she ___________A.looked round quicklyB.started breathing againC.rested before movingD.walked straight towards the front door3.When she was upstairs, the woman _______A.saw that there was a wash-basin in each roomB.noticed a mirror which she was looking forC.found a torch in one of the roomsD.opened four different doors4.Once she was in the house, the woman behaved as if what she was looking for ____A.might be in the kitchenB.was more likely to be upstairsC.would be easily seen by the light from the hallD.would look frightening to a child
DCDB试题分析：1.根据but clearly enough to show the smooth skin of a woman’s face.，可以看出汽车经过时车灯照亮了她的脸，是一位女士在街上走，故选D。2.根据She began to breathe hard..She leaned against the door for a moment, then straightened up as if with an effort,，故选C。3.根据She pushed each door open in turn and shone a torch inside,故选D。4.She pushed each door open in turn and shone a torch inside, and the light fell upon beds, walls, furniture, a bathroom hand-basin, a mirror which fla but this was not what the woman was looking for. She turned away and went downstairs, and hesitated again at the foot of the stairs.故选B。考点：本题是一篇细节描写的文章。点评：这篇文章看起来很难，实际很容易，只需根据问题从文章中寻找出有效信息即可。
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科目：高中英语
来源：2010年高考预测试题英语（四）
题型：阅读理解
EJust days after the January 4 premiere (首映) of Hollywood blockbuster Avatar in China, the box offices across the country had gone beyond 100 million yuan (around $14.7 million), thanks to the enthusiasm of huge number of Chinese movie fans. China Film Group Corp. Estimates are that the total box office may finally reach 500 million yuan.
Though almost every movie theater in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai gives Avatar top billing（最优先的档期）, with as many as 20 show times a day, Chinese audience still find it tough to get a ticket. In Beijing, the Wanda Movie Theater in Shijingshan, the first IMAX theater in Asia, is the first choice for Avatar moviegoers. The theater shows the 3D IMAX version of Avatar five times a day, and tickets are generally sold out a day in advance.In Shanghai, to get an IMAX ticket for Avatar can mean waiting in freezing weather all night for a show three days later. Shanghai local media reported that on Friday, around 500 people were queuing for tickets at 8 a.m. in front of the downtown Peace Cinema, including some who had waited for 12 hours. Movie fans came equipped with quilts, wooden stools and snacks, in a scene reminding of that at train ticket windows before the New Year, when huge numbers of Chinese travel to be with family.For the 3D version of Avatar, ticket prices varied for different theaters and time slots(场次), ranging from 60 yuan to 120 yuan. Meanwhile, illegal tickets traders asked as much as 600 yuan for the IMAX version in Shanghai. The Peace Cinema is planning to raise the ticket price for the IMAX version to as much as 200 yuan from the current 150 yuan from Jan. 14 for some time slots. A report by the People's Daily owes the difficulty in getting tickets partly to the lack of 3D screens in China. There are only 11 IMAX commercial theaters in nine cities across China. Because of this, people are traveling long distances to see the movie. In southern China, the IMAX-equipped Dongguan Wanda theater has seen a huge coming of people from Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Wednesday afternoon, due to a technical breakdown of the system, the movie was stopped for an hour, and the sound didn't come together with the picture. In the end, the general manager of the theater had to beg forgiveness on his knees twice to lessen the angry audience who drove a long way to see the movie. The theater had to pay back each audience member the full ticket price as well as 200 yuan for traffic expenses. The world-wide gross（总收入） for "Avatar" is now at $1.335 billion, second only to the $1.843 billion pulled in by "Titanic," another film directed by Cameron. But how long will 'Avatar' manage to hold its death grip around the number one spot?57. The behavior of movie fans in Shanghai shows that __________.A. the time slots of the film are not enoughB. people are too enthusiastic about the film AvatarC. Chinese seldom have chances to enjoy Hollywood blockbusters like AvatarD. the tickets for the film are harder to get than train tickets before the New Year58. Chinese audience still find it difficult to get a ticket for Avatar because __________.A. the weather is freezing and the queue is too longB. the cinemas have raised the ticket price for AvatarC. not many 3D screens are available in ChinaD. there are many illegal tickets traders in different cities59. From“how long will 'Avatar' manage to hold its death grip around the number one spot?”in the last Paragraph, we learn that the writer __________.A. thinks the film is sure to hold the number one spotB. questions the truth of the number one spot of the filmC. concludes that the film Avatar is not better than TitanicD. doubts whether the film can keep its popularity with the people60. The best title of the passage should be __________.A. Hollywood Blockbuster Avatar Hitting ChinaB. Chinese People Kneeling Down for a Film C. Lack of IMAX Theaters in ChinaD. Difficulty in Seeing Avatar in China
科目：高中英语
来源：2014届广东深圳高级中学高三上期第一次月考英语卷（解析版）
题型：信息匹配
请阅读下列应用文及相关信息，并按照要求匹配信息。请在答题卡上将对应题号的相应选项字母涂黑。以下是演讲会的资料：&A&Are you interested in “Dream of the RedMansion”(Hong Lou Meng)? Listen to a lecture on this classical novel.Venue: National Museum of Chinese Modern Literature(Beijing)Time: 9:30 A.m.Price: freeTel: 010 – &&&&&&&& B&“Jiaguwen” is among the oldest pictographiccharacters in the world．How much do you know about it? Get all theanswers at this free lecture. Venue: Dongcheng District Library (Beijing)Time: 9:00 a.m.Price: freeTel: 010 –C&Former United Nations interpreter Professor WangRuojin speaks about her experiences at the UN and shares her understanding ofthe cultural differences between East and West.Venue: National Library of China (Beijing)Time: 1:30 p.m. — 4:00 p. m.Price: free Tel: 010 – &&&&&&&& D&Qi Baishi, one of China’s greatest modernpainters, was also a poet, calligrapher(书法家) andseal-cutter(刻印者). Can you appreciate his works? Then cometo spend the time with us.Venue: Beijing Art AcademyTime: 9:00 A．m. – 11:00 A．m.Price: 10 YuanTel: 010 -E&It is the year of the Dog, and you can see “Fu”everywhere. But how much do you know about dogs–man’s best friend? What is “Fu”and where does it come from? Why do people hang “Fu” character upside down onthe door? Get all the answers from this free lecture.Venue: Capital Library (Beijing)Time: 2:00 p. m.Price: free Tel: 010 -
F&About 160 cultural relics from Guangdong, Macaoand Hong Kong are on display to April 15th. Meanwhile experts will talk aboutthe important roles these three cities have played in the past two thousandyears of Sino–Western exchanges.Venue: Beijing Art MuseumTime: 2:00 p. m. – 5:00 p. m.Price: 20 Yuan, students 10 YuanTel: 010 -以下是想去听演讲的人员的基本信息，请匹配适合他们的演讲内容。1.Alice is now studying in Beijing University, and sheis especially interested in Chinese writing. In her spare time she enjoysdrawing, writing poems and is fond of sharing her pieces with her classmates.2.Simon comes from Egypt. He is now studying inBeijing Art Academy. He shows great interest in Chinese ancient characters. Nowhe wants to know much about it.3.Lora and Peter, visiting professors from Australia,are both crazy about Chinese traditional culture. At weekends they like to callon Chinese families to learn about Chinese festivals as well as their history.4. Edward is a senior student in Beijing ForeignLanguage University. He likes traveling very much and has made up his mind towork as an interpreter for some joint–venture enterprises (合资企业). 5.Steve and Mark are both studying in the ChineseDepartment of China’s Renmin University. They want to do some research onChinese ancient literature.&
科目：高中英语
来源：2015届黑龙江友谊县红兴隆管理局第一中学高一月考英语卷（解析版）
题型：完型填空
I was tired and hungry after a long day of work. WhenI walked into the living-room, my 12-year-old son looked &&36&&at me and said, “I love you.” I didn't know what to say. &&37&&several seconds all I could do was to stand there and &&&38&&&&downat him . My first thought was that he must need &&39&withhis homework or he was trying to &&40&&me for somenews. Finally I asked, “What was that all about?” “Nothing,”he said. “My teacher said we should &&41&our parents thatwe love them and sees what they say. It’s &&42&. The next day I called his teacher to find out moreabout this “experiment” and how the other parents had &&43&.“Basically, most of the fathers had the &&44&&reaction as you did,” the teacher said. “When I first &&45&&wetry this, I asked the children what they thought their parents would say. Someof them thought their parents would have heart trouble. “The &&46&&is,” the teacherexplained, “feeling loved is an important part of& 47& . It issomething all people &&48&. What I'm trying to tell thechildren is that it's too &&49&&we don't all expressthose feeling. A boy &&50&&&tell his dad heloves him.” The teacher, a middle-aged man, understands how &&51&&itis for some of us to say the things that would be good for us to say. When my son came to me that evening, I held on to himfor a (n) &52&&moment. And just &&53&&hepulled away , I said in my deepest , most manly voice , “Hey , I love you , too. ”I don't know if saying that made either of ushealthier, but it did feel pretty good. Maybe next time one of my children says“I love you”, it would not take me a whole &&54&&&tothink of the right &&&&&&&55& . 1.&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．down&&&&&&&&& B．away&&&&&&&&&& C．out& D．up&2.&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．After&&&&&&&&& B．For&&&&&&&&&&& C．At&& D．On&3.&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．sit&&&&&&&&&&&& B．get&&&&&&&&&&& C．look D．knock&4.&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．rest&&&&&&&&&& B．time&&&&&&&&&& C．help D．paper&5.&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．report&&&&&&&& B．prepare&&&&&&& C．answer&& D．excuse&6.&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．help&&&&&&&&&& B．tell&&&&&&&&&&& C．ask& D．make&7.&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．a matter&&&&&&& B．an experiment&& C．a word&& D．a sentence&8.&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．said&&&&&&&&&& B．reacted&&&&&&&& C．done D．explained&9.&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．same&&&&&&&&& B．different&&&&&&& C．usual D．common&10.&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．suggested &&&&& B．agreed&&&&&&&& C．allowed&& D．planned&11.&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．point&&&&&&&&& B．idea&&&&&&&&&& C．way& D．cause&12.&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．body&&&&&&&&& B．health&&&&&&&&& C．work D．study&13.&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．have&&&&&&&&&& B．know&&&&&&&&& C．take& D．need&14.&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．bad&&&&&&&&&& B．good&&&&&&&&&& C．late& D．early&15.&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．might&&&&&&&&& B．can&&&&&&&&&&& C．dare& D．should&16.&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．easy&&&&&&&&&& B．much&&&&&&&&& C．often D．difficult&17.&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．more&&&&&&&&& B．full&&&&&&&&&&& C．exact D．extra&18.&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．before&&&&&&&& B．after&&&&&&&&&& C．because&& D．if&19.&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．day&&&&&&&&&&& B．week&&&&&&&&& C．afternoon& D．night&20.&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A．answer&&&&&&&& B．result&&&&&&&&& C．reason&&& D．experiment&&
科目：高中英语
来源：2015届北京市东城区高一下学期期末考试英语卷（解析版）
题型：阅读理解
About ten years ago, a young and very successfulbusinessman named Josh was traveling down a Chicago neighborhood street. He wasgoing a bit too fast in his shiny, black, 12 cylinder Jaguar XKE, which wasonly two months old.He was watching for kids rushing out from betweenparked cars and slowed down when he thought he saw something. As his carpassed, no child came out, but a brick sailed out and - WHUMP!& - it hitthe Jaguar's shiny black side door! SCREECH ... ! ! ! ! Immediately Joshstopped the car, jumped out, seized the kid and pushed him up against a parkedcar. He shouted at the kid, &What was that all about and who are you? Justwhat the heck are you doing?!& &That's my new Jaguar, that brick youthrew is gonna cost you a lot of money. Why did you throw it?&&Please, mister, please...I'm sorry! I didn'tknow what else to do!& begged the youngster. &I threw the brickbecause no one else would stop!& tears were streaming down the boy's faceas he pointed around the parked car.& &It's my brother, mister,&he said. &He rolled off the curb (路沿) and fellout of his wheelchair and I can't lift him up. & Sobbing, the boy askedthe businessman, &Would you please help me get him back into his wheelchair?He's hurt and he's too heavy for me. &Moved by the words, the young businessman lifted theyoung man back into the wheelchair and took out his handkerchief and wiped thescrapers and cuts, checking to see that everything was going to be OK. He then watchedthe younger brother push him down the sidewalk toward their home.It was a long walk back to the black, shining, 12cylinder Jaguar XKE -- a long and slow walk. Josh never did fix the side doorof his Jaguar. He kept the dent (凹痕) to remindhim not to go through life so fast that someone has to throw a brick at him toget his attention. Feel for the bricks of life coming you.1.The boy threw a brick at the businessman's carbecause ________.A. he wanted to ask for some moneyB. he wanted to get help from the driverC. the businessman drove at a high speedD. he hated the brand-new car very much2.What can we learn from the passage?A. Josh would accept the money from the kids.B. The two kids were Josh's neighbors.C. Josh's new car broke down easily.D. Josh was a kind-hearted man.3.According to the passage, the last sentence means________.A. trying to be more understanding seeing others introubleB. trying to get ready for the trouble in your futurelifeC. driving fast in a neighborhood street is dangerousD. protecting oneself from being hurt&
科目：高中英语
来源：学年山东省高三12月月考英语试卷（解析版）
题型：阅读理解
While watching the Olympics the other night, I cameacross an unbelievable sight. It was not a gold medal, or a world recordbroken, but a show of courage. The event was swimming and started with only three menon the blocks. For one reason or another, two of them false started, so theywere disqualified. That left only one to compete. It would have been difficultenough, not having anyone to race against, even though the time on the clock isimportant. I watched the man dive off the block and knew rightaway that something was wrong. I’m not an expert swimmer, but I can tell a gooddive from a poor one, and this was not exactly medal quality. When heresurfaced, it was evident that the man was not out for gold – his arms werewaving in an attempt at freestyle. The crowd started to laugh. Clearly this manwas not a medal competitor. I listened to the crowd begin to laugh at this poorman who was clearly having a hard time. Finally he made his turn to start back.It was pitiful. He made a few desperate strokes and you could tell he was wornout. But in those few awful strokes, the crowd had changed.No longer were they laughing, but beginning to cheer.Some even began to stand and shout “Come on, you can do it!” and he did. A clear minute past the average swimmer, this youngman finally finished his race. The crowd went wild. You would have thought thathe had won the gold, and he should have. Even though he recorded one of theslowest times in Olympic history, this man gave more heart than any of theother competitors. Just a short year ago, he had never even swum, let alonerace. His country had been invited to Sydney. In a competition where athletes remove their silvermedals feeling they have somehow been cheated out of gold, or when they act soproudly in front of their competitors , it is nice to watch an underdog.1.From the passage we can learn that the young man&&&&&&&&.A．made his turnto start back pitifullyB．was skillfulin freestyle in the gameC．swam fasterthan the average swimmer D．was notcapable enough to win the medal2.The crowd changed their attitudes because&&&&&&&&&.A．they feltsorry for the young man B．they weremoved by the young man’s courageC．they wantedto show their sympathyD．they meant toplease the young man3.According to the passage, “it is nice to watch anunderdog” probably means&&&&&&&&&.A．it’s amazing to watch an ordinary man challenging himselfB．it’s amusing to watch a man with awful swimming skillsC．it’s cheerful for athletes to act proudly before theircompetitorsD．it’s brave enough for some athletes to remove the silvermedals4.Which of the following is NOT true according to thepassage?A．The eventstarted with three men, two of whom were disqualified later.B．The crowdstarted to laugh at the athlete’s arms waving in anattempt at freestyle.C．The athlete,as well as the author, is an expert swimmer.D．The swimmingevent is a show of courage rather than a fierce competition.5.What’s the best title for the passage?A．Compete forGold!&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& B．Try again!C．Break aRecord!&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& D．Go for it!&
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An opinion poll, sometimes simply
referred to as a poll, is a survey of public opinion from a
particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent
the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions
and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence
intervals.
The first known example of an opinion
poll was a local straw poll conducted by The Harrisburg
Pennsylvanian in , showing Andrew Jackson leading John Quincy Adams
by 335 votes to 169 in the contest for the United States
Presidency. Since Jackson won the popular vote in that state and
the whole country, such straw votes gradually became more popular,
but they remained local, usually city-wide phenomena. In 1916, the
Literary Digest embarked on a national survey (partly as a
circulation-raising exercise) and correctly predicted Woodrow
Wilson's election as president. Mailing out millions of postcards
and simply counting the returns, the Digest correctly predicted the
victories of Warren Harding in 1920, Calvin Coolidge in 1924,
Herbert Hoover in 1929, and Franklin Roosevelt in 1932.
Then, in , its 2.3 million "voters"
const however, they were generally more
affluent Americans who tended to have Republican sympathies. The
Literary Digest was ignorant of this new bias. The week before
election day, it reported that Alf Landon was far more popular than
Roosevelt. At the same time, George Gallup conducted a far smaller,
but more scientifically based survey, in which he polled a
demographically representative sample. Gallup correctly predicted
Roosevelt's landslide victory. The Literary Digest soon went out of
business, while polling started to take off.
Elmo Roper was another American pioneer
in political forecasting using scientific polls.1 He predicted the
reelection of President Franklin D. Roosevelt three times, in 1936,
1940, and 1944. Louis Harris had been in the field of public
opinion since 1947 when he joined the Elmo Roper firm, then later
became partner.
In September 1938 Jean Stoetzel, after
having met Gallup, created IFOP, the Institut Fran?ais d'Opinion
Publique, as the first European survey institute in Paris and
started political polls in summer 1939 with the question "Why die
for Danzig?", looking for popular support or dissent with this
question asked by appeasement politician and future
collaborationist Marcel Déat.
Gallup launched a subsidiary in the
United Kingdom that, almost alone, correctly predicted Labour's
victory in the , unlike virtually all other commentators, who
expected a victory for the Conservative Party, led by Winston
Churchill.
The Allied occupation powers helped to
create survey institutes in all of the Western occupation zones of
Germany in 1947 and 1948 to better steer denazification.
By the 1950s, various types of polling
had spread to most democracies.
Sample and polling methodseditThis article or section lacks a
single coherent topic. Please help improve this article by
rewording sentences, removing irrelevant information, or splitting
the article into multiple articles. Specific concerns may appear on
the talk page.(July 2010)
Voter polling questionnaire on display at the Smithsonian
Institution
Opinion polls for many years were
maintained through telecommunications or in person-to-person
contact. Methods and techniques vary, though they are widely
accepted in most areas. Verbal, ballot, and processed types can be
conducted efficiently, contrasted with other types of surveys,
systematics, and complicated matrices beyond previous orthodox
procedures.citation needed
Opinion polling developed into popular
applications through popular thought, although response rates for
some surveys declined. Also, the following has also led to
differentiating results:1 Some polling organizations, such as Angus
Reid Public Opinion, YouGov and Zogby use Internet surveys, where a
sample is drawn from a large panel of volunteers, and the results
are weighted to reflect the demographics of the population of
interest. In contrast, popular web polls draw on whoever wishes to
participate, rather than a scientific sample of the population, and
are therefore not generally considered professional.
Recently, statistical learning methods
have been proposed in order to exploit Social Media content (such
as posts on the micro-blogging platform of Twitter) for modelling
and predicting voting intention polls.23
Polls can be used in the public relation
field as well. In the early 1920s Public Relation experts described
their work as a two way street. Their job would be to present the
misinterpreted interests of large institutions to public. They
would also gauge the typically ignored interests of the public
through polls.
Benchmark pollsedit
A benchmark poll is generally the first
poll taken in a campaign. It is often taken before a candidate
announces their bid for office but sometimes it happens immediately
following that announcement after they have had some opportunity to
raise funds. This is generally a short and simple survey of likely
A benchmark poll serves a number of
purposes for a campaign, whether it is a political campaign or some
other type of campaign. First, it gives the candidate a picture of
where they stand with the electorate before any campaigning takes
place. If the poll is done prior to announcing for office the
candidate may use the poll to decide whether or not they should
even run for office. Secondly, it shows them where their weaknesses
and strengths are in two main areas. The first is the electorate. A
benchmark poll shows them what types of voters they are sure to
win, those who they are sure to lose, and everyone in-between those
two extremes. This lets the campaign know which voters are
persuadable so they can spend their limited resources in the most
effective manner. Second, it can give them an idea of what
messages, ideas, or slogans are the strongest with the
electorate.4
Brushfire pollsedit
Brushfire Polls are polls taken during
the period between the Benchmark Poll and Tracking Polls. The
number of Brushfire Polls taken by a campaign is determined by how
competitive the race is and how much money the campaign has to
spend. These polls usually focus on likely voters and the length of
the survey varies on the number of messages being tested.
Brushfire polls are used for a number of
purposes. First, it lets the candidate know if they have made any
progress on the ballot, how much progress has been made, and in
what demographics they have been making or losing ground. Secondly,
it is a way for the campaign to test a variety of messages, both
positive and negative, on themselves and their opponent(s). This
lets the campaign know what messages work best with certain
demographics and what messages should be avoided. Campaigns often
use these polls to test possible attack messages that their
opponent may use and potential responses to those attacks. The
campaign can then spend some time preparing an effective response
to any likely attacks. Thirdly, this kind of poll can be used by
candidates or political parties to convince primary challengers to
drop out of a race and support a stronger candidate.
A tracking poll is a poll repeated at
intervals generally averaged over a trailing window.5 For example,
a weekly tracking poll uses the data from the past week and
discards older data.
A caution is that estimating the trend
is more difficult and error-prone than estimating the level –
intuitively, if one estimates the change, the difference between
two numbers X and Y, then one has to contend with the error in both
X and Y – it is not enough to simply take the difference, as the
change may be random noise. For details, see t-test. A rough guide
is that if the change in measurement falls outside the margin of
error, it is worth attention.
Potential for inaccuracyedit
Polls based on samples of populations
are subject to sampling error which reflects the effects of chance
and uncertainty in the sampling process. The uncertainty is often
expressed as a margin of error. The margin of error is usually
defined as the radius of a confidence interval for a particular
statistic from a survey. One example is the percent of people who
prefer product A versus product B. When a single, global margin of
error is reported for a survey, it refers to the maximum margin of
error for all reported percentages using the full sample from the
survey. If the statistic is a percentage, this maximum margin of
error can be calculated as the radius of the confidence interval
for a reported percentage of 50%. Others suggest that a poll with a
random sample of 1,000 people has margin of sampling error of 3%
for the estimated percentage of the whole population.
A 3% margin of error means that if the
same procedure is used a large number of times, 95% of the time the
true population average will be within the 95% confidence interval
of the sample estimate plus or minus 3%. The margin of error can be
reduced by using a larger sample, however if a pollster wishes to
reduce the margin of error to 1% they would need a sample of around
10,000 people.6 In practice, pollsters need to balance the cost of
a large sample against the reduction in sampling error and a sample
size of around 500–1,000 is a typical compromise for political
polls. (Note that to get complete responses it may be necessary to
include thousands of additional participators.)7
Another way to reduce the margin of
error is to rely on poll averages. This makes the assumption that
the procedure is similar enough between many different polls and
uses the sample size of each poll to create a polling average.8 An
example of a polling average can be found here: . Another source of
error stems from faulty demographic models by pollsters who weigh
their samples by particular variables such as party identification
in an election. For example, if you assume that the breakdown of
the US population by party identification has not changed since the
previous presidential election, you may underestimate a victory or
a defeat of a particular party candidate that saw a surge or
decline in its party registration relative to the previous
presidential election cycle.
Over time, a number of theories and
mechanisms have been offered to explain erroneous polling results.
Some of these reflect errors on the p many of
them are statistical in nature. Others blame the respondents for
not giving candid answers (e.g., the Bradley effect, the Shy Tory
Factor); these can be more controversial.
Nonresponse biasedit
Since some people do not answer calls
from strangers, or refuse to answer the poll, poll samples may not
be representative samples from a population due to a non-response
bias. Because of this selection bias, the characteristics of those
who agree to be interviewed may be markedly different from those
who decline. That is, the actual sample is a biased version of the
universe the pollster wants to analyze. In these cases, bias
introduces new errors, one way or the other, that are in addition
to errors caused by sample size. Error due to bias does not become
smaller with larger sample sizes, because taking a larger sample
size simply repeats the same mistake on a larger scale. If the
people who refuse to answer, or are never reached, have the same
characteristics as the people who do answer, then the final results
should be unbiased. If the people who do not answer have different
opinions then there is bias in the results. In terms of election
polls, studies suggest that bias effects are small, but each
polling firm has its own techniques for adjusting weights to
minimize selection bias.9
Survey results may be affected by
response bias, where the answers given by respondents do not
reflect their true beliefs. This may be deliberately engineered by
unscrupulous pollsters in order to generate a certain result or
please their clients, but more often is a result of the detailed
wording or ordering of questions (see below). Respondents may
deliberately try to manipulate the outcome of a poll by e.g.
advocating a more extreme position than they actually hold in order
to boost their side of the argument or give rapid and
ill-considered answers in order to hasten the end of their
questioning. Respondents may also feel under social pressure not to
give an unpopular answer. For example, respondents might be
unwilling to admit to unpopular attitudes like racism or sexism,
and thus polls might not reflect the true incidence of these
attitudes in the population. In American political parlance, this
phenomenon is often referred to as the Bradley effect. If the
results of surveys are widely publicized this effect may be
magnified - a phenomenon commonly referred to as the spiral of
Wording of questionsedit
It is well established that the wording
of the questions, the order in which they are asked and the number
and form of alternative answers offered can influence results of
polls. For instance, the public is more likely to indicate support
for a person who is described by the operator as one of the
"leading candidates". This support itself overrides subtle bias for
one candidate, as does lumping some candidates in an "other"
category or vice versa. Thus comparisons between polls often boil
down to the wording of the question. On some issues, question
wording can result in quite pronounced differences between
surveys.101112 This can also, however, be a result of legitimately
conflicted feelings or evolving attitudes, rather than a poorly
constructed survey.13
A common technique to control for this
bias is to rotate the order in which questions are asked. Many
pollsters also split-sample. This involves having two different
versions of a question, with each version presented to half the
respondents.
The most effective controls, used by
attitude researchers, are:
asking enough questions to allow all aspects of an issue to be
covered and to control effects due to the form of the question
(such as positive or negative wording), the adequacy of the number
being established quantitatively with psychometric measures such as
reliability coefficients, andanalyzing the results with
psychometric techniques which synthesize the answers into a few
reliable scores and detect ineffective questions.
These controls are not widely used in
the polling industry.why?
Another source of error is the use of
samples that are not representative of the population as a
consequence of the methodology used, as was the experience of the
Literary Digest in 1936. For example, telephone sampling has a
built-in error because in many times and places, those with
telephones have generally been richer than those without.
In some places many people have only
mobile telephones. Because pollsters cannot call mobile phones (it
is unlawful in the United States to make unsolicited calls to
phones where the phone's owner may be charged simply for taking a
call), these individuals are typically excluded from polling
samples. There is concern that, if the subset of the population
without cell phones differs markedly from the rest of the
population, these differences can skew the results of the poll.
Polling organizations have developed many weighting techniques to
help overcome these deficiencies, with varying degrees of success.
Studies of mobile phone users by the Pew Research Center in the US,
in 2007, concluded that "cell-only respondents are different from
landline respondents in important ways, (but) they were neither
numerous enough nor different enough on the questions we examined
to produce a significant change in overall general population
survey estimates when included with the landline samples and
weighted according to US Census parameters on basic demographic
characteristics."14
This issue was first identified in
2004,15 but came to prominence only during the 2008 US presidential
election.16 In previous elections, the proportion of the general
population using cell phones was small, but as this proportion has
increased, there is concern that polling only landlines is no
longer representative of the general population. In 2003, only 2.9%
of households were wireless (cellphones only), compared to 12.8% in
2006.17 This results in "coverage error". Many polling
organisations select their sample by dialling random telephone
however, in 2008, there was a clear tendency for polls
which included mobile phones in their samples to show a much larger
lead for Obama, than polls that did not.1819
The potential sources of bias are:20
Some households use cellphones only and have no landline. This
tends to include minoritie and occurs more
frequently in metropolitan areas. Men are more likely to be
cellphone-only compared to women.Some people may not be contactable
by landline from Monday to Friday and may be contactable only by
cellphone.Some people use their landlines only to access the
Internet, and answer calls only to their cellphones.
Some polling companies have attempted to
get around that problem by including a "cellphone supplement".
There are a number of problems with including cellphones in a
telephone poll:
It is difficult to get co-operation from cellphone users, because
in many parts of the US, users are charged for both outgoing and
incoming calls. That means that pollsters have had to offer
financial compensation to gain co-operation.US federal law
prohibits the use of automated dialling devices to call cellphones
(Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991). Numbers therefore have
to be dialled by hand, which is more time-consuming and expensive
for pollsters.
An oft-quoted example of opinion polls
succumbing to errors occurred during the UK General Election of
1992. Despite the polling organizations using different
methodologies, virtually all the polls taken before the vote, and
to a lesser extent, exit polls taken on voting day, showed a lead
for the opposition Labour party, but the actual vote gave a clear
victory to the ruling Conservative party.
In their deliberations after this
embarrassment the pollsters advanced several ideas to account for
their errors, including:
Late swing Voters who changed their minds shortly before
voting tended to favour the Conservatives, so the error was not as
great as it first appeared.Nonresponse bias Conservative
voters were less likely to participate in surveys than in the past
and were thus under-represented.The Shy Tory Factor The
Conservatives had suffered a sustained period of unpopularity as a
result of economic difficulties and a series of minor scandals,
leading to a spiral of silence in which some Conservative
supporters were reluctant to disclose their sincere intentions to
pollsters.
The relative importance of these factors
was, and remains, a matter of controversy, but since then the
polling organizations have adjusted their methodologies and have
achieved more accurate results in subsequent election
campaigns.citation needed
A widely publicized failure of opinion
polling to date in the United States was the prediction that Thomas
Dewey would defeat Harry S. Truman in the . Major polling
organizations, including Gallup and Roper, indicated a landslide
victory for Dewey.
In the United Kingdom, most polls failed
to predict the Conservative election victories of and , and
Labour's victory in . However, their figures at other elections
have been generally accurate.
Effect on votersedit
By providing information about voting
intentions, opinion polls can sometimes influence the behavior of
electors, and in his book The Broken Compass, Peter Hitchens
asserts that opinion polls are actually a device for influencing
public opinion.21 The various theories about how this happens can
be split into two groups: bandwagon/underdog effects, and strategic
("tactical") voting.
A bandwagon effect occurs when the poll
prompts voters to back the candidate shown to be winning in the
poll. The idea that voters are susceptible to such effects is old,
stemming at least from 1884; William Safire reported that the term
was first used in a political cartoon in the magazine Puck in that
year.22 It has also remained persistent in spite of a lack of
empirical corroboration until the late 20th century. George Gallup
spent much effort in vain trying to discredit this theory in his
time by presenting empirical research. A recent meta-study of
scientific research on this topic indicates that from the 1980s
onward the Bandwagon effect is found more often by
researchers.23
The opposite of the bandwagon effect is
the underdog effect. It is often mentioned in the media. This
occurs when people vote, out of sympathy, for the party perceived
to be "losing" the elections. There is less empirical evidence for
the existence of this effect than there is for the existence of the
bandwagon effect.23
The second category of theories on how
polls directly affect voting is called strategic or tactical
voting. This theory is based on the idea that voters view the act
of voting as a means of selecting a government. Thus they will
sometimes not choose the candidate they prefer on ground of
ideology or sympathy, but another, less-preferred, candidate from
strategic considerations. An example can be found in the United
Kingdom general election, 1997. As he was then a Cabinet Minister,
Michael Portillo's constituency of Enfield Southgate was believed
to be a safe seat but opinion polls showed the Labour candidate
Stephen Twigg steadily gaining support, which may have prompted
undecided voters or supporters of other parties to support Twigg in
order to remove Portillo. Another example is the boomerang effect
where the likely supporters of the candidate shown to be winning
feel that chances are slim and that their vote is not required,
thus allowing another candidate to win.
In addition, Mark Pickup in Cameron
Anderson and Laura Stephenson's "Voting Behaviour in Canada"
outlines three additional "behavioural" responses that voters may
exhibit when faced with polling data.
The first is known as a "cue taking"
effect which holds that poll data is used as a "proxy" for
information about the candidates or parties. Cue taking is "based
on the psychological phenomenon of using heuristics to simplify a
complex decision" (243).24
The second, first described by Petty and
Cacioppo (1996) is known as "cognitive response" theory. This
theory asserts that a voter's response to a poll may not line with
their initial conception of the electoral reality. In response, the
voter is likely to generate a "mental list" in which they create
reasons for a party's loss or gain in the polls. This can reinforce
or change their opinion of the candidate and thus affect voting
behaviour.
Third, the final possibility is a
"behavioural response" which is similar to a cognitive response.
The only salient difference is that a voter will go and seek new
information to form their "mental list," thus becoming more
informed of the election. This may then affect voting
behaviour.
These effects indicate how opinion polls
can directly affect political choices of the electorate. But
directly or indirectly, other effects can be surveyed and analyzed
on all political parties. The form of media framing and party
ideology shifts must also be taken under consideration. Opinion
polling in some instances is a measure of cognitive bias, which is
variably considered and handled appropriately in its various
applications.
Effect on politicianseditThis section requires expansion. (March
Starting in the 1980s, tracking polls
and related technologies began having a notable impact on U.S.
political leaders.25 According to Douglas Bailey, a Republican who
had helped run Gerald Ford's , "It's no longer necessary for a
political candidate to guess what an audience thinks. He can [find
out] with a nightly tracking poll. So it's no longer likely that
political leaders are going to lead. Instead, they're going to
follow."25
Some jurisdictions over the world
restrict the publication of the results of opinion polls in order
to prevent the possibly erroneous results from affecting voters'
decisions. For instance, in Canada, it is prohibited to publish the
results of opinion surveys that would identify specific political
parties or candidates in the final three days before a poll
However, most western democratic nations
don't support the entire prohibition of the publication of
pre-el most of them have no regulation and
some only prohibit it in the final days or hours until the relevant
poll closes.27 A survey by Canada's Royal Commission on Electoral
Reform reported that the prohibition period of publication of the
survey results largely differed in different countries. Out of the
20 countries examined, three prohibit the publication during the
entire period of campaigns, while others prohibit it for a shorter
term such as the polling period or the final 48 hours before a poll
^ abCantril, H Strunk, Mildred (1951). "Public
Opinion, ". Princeton University Press.
p. vii.^Vasileios Lampos, Daniel Preotiuc-Pietro and
Trevor Cohn. A user-centric model of voting intention from Social
Media. Proceedings of the 51st Annual Meeting of the Association
for Computational Linguistics. ACL, pp. 993-.
http://aclweb.org/anthology/P/P13/P13-1098.pdf^Brendan
O'Connor, Ramnath Balasubramanyan, Bryan R Routledge, and Noah A
Smith. From Tweets to Polls: Linking Text Sentiment to Public
Opinion Time Series. In Proceedings of the International AAAI
Conference on Weblogs and Social Media. AAAI Press, pp. 122–129,
2010.^Kenneth F. Warren (1992). "in Defense of Public
Opinion Polling." Westview Press. p. 200-1.^An estimate of
the margin of error in percentage terms can be gained by the
formula 100 ÷ square root of sample size^"publicagenda.org".
publicagenda.org. Retrieved .^Lynch, Scott M.
Introduction to Bayesian Statistics and Estimation for Social
Scientists (2007).^Langer, Gary (2003-05). "About Response
Rates: Some Unresolved Questions". ABC News. Retrieved
.^"Public Agenda Issue Guide: Higher Education -
Public View - Red Flags Public Agenda". Publicagenda.org. Retrieved
.^"Public Agenda Issue Guide: Gay Rights - Public
View - Red Flags Public Agenda". Publicagenda.org. Retrieved
.^"The Seven Stages of Public Opinion Public
Agenda". Publicagenda.org. Retrieved .^Keeter,
Scott (). "How Serious Is Polling's Cell-Only Problem?".
Pew Research Center Publications.^Blumenthal, Mark
(). "More Pollsters Interviewing By Cell Phone".
. Retrieved .^Blumenthal, Mark
(). "New Pew data on cell phones". Pollster. Retrieved
.^Blumberg SJ, Luke JV (). Wireless
Substitution: Early Release of Estimates Based on Data from the
National Health Interview Survey, July–December 2006 (PDF). Centers
for Disease Control. Retrieved .^Silver, Nate
(). "The Cellphone effect, continued".
. Retrieved .^Blumenthal, Mark
(). "More Cell Phone Data from Gallup". .
Retrieved .^Silver, Nate (). "The
Cellphone Problem, Revisited". . Retrieved
.^Hitchens, Peter (2009). "Chapter 1, Guy Fawkes
Gets a Blackberry". The Broken Compass: How British Politics Lost
its Way. Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
ISBN 1-.^Safire, William, Safire's Political
Dictionary, page 42. Random House, 1993.^ abIrwin,
Galen A. and Joop J. M. Van Holsteyn. Bandwagons, Underdogs, the
Titanic and the Red Cross: The Influence of Public Opinion Polls on
Voters (2000).^Anderson, Cameron (2010). "10". Voting
Behaviour in Canada. Vancouver: UBC Press. pp. 243–278.More
than one of |author= and |last= specified (help)^
abKaiser, Robert G. (March 9, 2011). "David S.
Broder: The best political reporter of his time". The Washington
Post. Retrieved .^ abClaude Emery (January
1994), Public opinion polling in Canada, Library of Parliament,
Canada^Tim Bale (2002). "Restricting the broadcast and
publication of pre-election and exit polls: some selected
examples". Representation39 (1): 15–22.
External referenceseditAsher, Herbert: Polling and the Public. What
Every Citizen Should Know, fourth edition. Washington, D.C.: CQ
Press, 1998.Bourdieu, Pierre, "Public Opinion does not exist" in
Sociology in Question, London, Sage (1995).Bradburn, Norman M. and
Seymour Sudman. Polls and Surveys: Understanding What They Tell Us
(1988).Cantril, Hadley. Gauging Public Opinion (1944).Cantril,
Hadley and Mildred Strunk, eds. Public Opinion,
massive compilation of many public opinion polls from US, UK,
Canada, Australia, and elsewhere.Converse, Jean M. Survey Research
in the United States: Roots and Emergence
(1987), the
standard history.Gallup, George. Public Opinion in a Democracy
(1939).Gallup, Alec M. ed. The Gallup Poll Cumulative Index: Public
(1999) lists 10,000+ questions, but no
results.Gallup, George Horace, ed. The Gallup P Public Opinion,
vol (1972) summarizes results of each poll.Robinson,
Claude E. Straw Votes (1932).Robinson, Matthew Mobocracy: How the
Media's Obsession with Polling Twists the News, Alters Elections,
and Undermines Democracy (2002).James G. Webster, Patricia F.
Phalen, Lawrence W. L Ratings Analysis: The Theory and
Practice of Audience Research Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000.
Additional Sources
Walden, Graham R. Survey Research Methodology, : An
Annotated Bibliography. Bibliographies and Indexes in Law and
Political Science Series. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, Greenwood
Publishing Group, Inc., 2002. xx, 432p.Walden, Graham R. Public
Opinion Polls and Survey Research: A Selective Annotated
Bibliography of U.S. Guides and Studies from the 1980s. Public
Affairs and Administrative Series, edited by James S. Bowman, vol.
24. New York, NY: Garland Publishing Inc., 1990. xxix, 360p.Walden,
Graham R. Polling and Survey Research Methods : An
Annotated Bibliography. Bibliographies and Indexes in Law and
Political Science Series, vol. 25. Westport, CT: Greenwood
Publishing Group, Inc., 1996. xxx, 581p.Wikimedia Commons has media
related to Category:Opinion polls.Polls from UCB Libraries
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information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and
the world by conducting public opinion polling and social science
researchPublic Agenda for Citizens nonpartisan, nonprofit group
that tracks public opinion data in the United StatesNational
Council on Public Polls association of polling organizations in the
United States devoted to setting high professional standards for
surveysHow Will America Vote Aggregates polling data with
demographic sub-samples.USA Election Polls tracks the public
opinion polls related to elections in the US"Poll Position - Issue
010 - GOOD", track record of pollsters for USA presidential
elections in Good magazine, April 23, 2008.Gathering dataAnalyzing
dataApplications
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