Latest Wall Street Journal poll.

華爾街日報》最新民意調查。

New Washington Post poll out this morning.

華盛頓郵報》今早發佈了新的民意調查。

A new exclusive poll.

一項新的獨家民意調查。

New polls have been released what feels like every day this election cycle.

在這個選舉週期中，感覺每天都有新的民調發布。

Trump ahead by two.

特朗普領先兩分

Harris up by four.

哈里斯領先四分

Deadlocked race.

比賽陷入僵局

A tied race.

平局

And you might be staring at ones like these, hoping it'll answer the question of who will win this presidential election.

你可能會盯著這些照片，希望它能回答誰將贏得這次總統大選的問題。

But there's a lot more to these numbers than meets the eye.

但是，這些數字遠不止這些。

And there's a few reasons they'll disappoint you if you rely on them to predict the future.

如果你依賴它們來預測未來，有幾個原因會讓你失望。

It is still anybody's race.

這仍然是一場誰都可以參加的比賽。

These numbers are from the Timed Siena poll on October 25th, which suggests that 48% of

這些數字來自 10 月 25 日的定時錫耶納民調，該民調顯示，48% 的受訪者表示 "不支持"。

American voters plan to vote for Kamala Harris, while 48% plan to vote for Donald Trump.

美國選民計劃將選票投給卡馬拉-哈里斯（Kamala Harris），而 48% 的選民計劃將選票投給唐納德-特朗普（Donald Trump）。

But of course, pollsters didn't survey every American.

當然，民調機構並沒有調查每個美國人。

They surveyed a sample of them.

他們對其中一些人進行了抽樣調查。

Today, pollsters find their sample of people to survey through a mix of phone calls, text messages, online surveys, or by mail.

如今，民調機構通過電話、簡訊、在線調查或郵寄等多種方式尋找調查樣本。

And if you're thinking, who even answers those kinds of things?

如果你在想，誰會回答這些問題呢？

The answer is, not a lot of people.

答案是，不是很多人。

The response rate for polling can be as low as 1-2%, which means pollsters have to reach out to as many as 100,000 people to poll 1,000 people, which is a typical sample size for a national poll.

民調的回覆率可能低至 1-2%，這意味著民調機構必須接觸多達 10 萬人，才能對 1000 人進行民調，而這是全國性民調的典型樣本量。

Or 50,000 people to reach the roughly 500 people typical for a state poll.

或者說，50,000 人才能達到州級民意調查通常的 500 人左右。

Which sounds small, but that amount of people can still be accurate at measuring the opinion of a population, if you read the polls with a few caveats in mind.

這聽起來很小，但如果你在閱讀民意調查時考慮到一些注意事項，那麼這樣的人數仍然可以準確地衡量一個群體的意見。

The first thing to know about these numbers is there is a margin of error, which means this number is best thought of as the center point in a range of possible outcomes.

首先要知道的是，這些數字都有誤差範圍，也就是說，最好把這個數字看作是一系列可能結果中的中心點。

On average, for a sample size of 1,000, any number that's 3% different in either direction could still technically be accurate.

平均而言，在 1000 個樣本中，任何一個數字如果在兩個方向上相差 3%，從技術上講仍然是準確的。

And that's simply because any time you depend on a sample to represent a larger population, there's a lack of precision.

這只是因為任何時候，如果你依靠樣本來代表更大的人群，就會缺乏精確性。

A general rule of thumb is that the bigger the sample size, the smaller the margin of error.

一般的經驗法則是，樣本量越大，誤差範圍越小。

But there's only so much pollsters can do.

但民調機構也只能做這麼多。

Polling more people is a lot more costly.

對更多的人進行民意調查，成本要高得多。

And time consuming, which matters because big news events can alter people's opinions.

而且耗時，這很重要，因為重大新聞事件會改變人們的觀點。

And ultimately, increasing the sample size can have diminishing returns on accuracy.

最終，增加樣本量對準確性的影響會越來越小。

And it really starts to level off around 1,000, 1,500, 2,000 interviews in terms of if you keep putting in more effort, are you going to be more accurate?

大約在 1000、1500 或 2000 次訪談後，情況開始趨於穩定，因為如果你繼續付出更多努力，你的訪談是否會更準確？

The answer becomes no pretty quickly.

答案很快就變成了 "不"。

And part of it is because as a pollster, you're either doing a phone poll or you're doing an online poll.

部分原因在於，作為民意調查人員，你要麼在做電話民意調查，要麼在做網絡民意調查。

And if you keep interviewing thousands and thousands of more people through that mechanism, the next 10,000 are going to be just like the 2,000 people you already spoke with.

如果你繼續通過這種機制採訪成千上萬的人，那麼接下來的一萬人就會和你已經採訪過的兩千人一樣。

This margin of error doesn't account for other errors in the polling process, things that are harder to measure, like excluding certain demographic groups, low response rates among certain groups, and people misunderstanding the survey questions or misreporting their opinions, which means this 3% margin is actually a low estimate.

這個誤差率並沒有考慮到民調過程中的其他誤差，比如排除某些人口群體、某些群體的低迴復率、人們誤解了調查問題或誤報了自己的觀點等較難衡量的因素，這意味著3%的誤差率實際上是一個較低的估計值。

The rule of thumb is that you should actually double it.

經驗法則是，實際上應該加倍。

Before a poll is released, pollsters have to do some work to make sure the sample size looks just like the entire population, based on sources like the US Census and voting files.

在發佈民調之前，民調機構必須做一些工作，根據美國人口普查和投票檔案等來源，確保樣本量與整個人口相一致。

It's called weighting.

這就是所謂的加權。

For one, some groups are more likely to be reached by pollsters and respond to them.

首先，有些群體更容易接觸到民調機構並對其做出迴應。

You have usually too many college graduates, often too many women, and maybe too many white adults.

你們通常有太多的大學畢業生，通常有太多的女性，也許還有太多的白人成年人。

Between 2016 and 2020, Trump supporters were more difficult to reach in surveys.

在 2016 年至 2020 年期間，特朗普的支持者在調查中更難接觸到。

After data collection, there's ways in which your sample now departs from being random and representative.

在數據收集之後，您的樣本會在某些方面偏離隨機性和代表性。

Now weighting is how a pollster fixes that.

現在，加權就是民調機構解決這一問題的方法。

So if each individual in a poll starts off with a value of 1, weighting is when people who are underrepresented compared to the larger population get a value higher than 1, while groups who are overrepresented get a smaller value.

是以，如果民意調查中每個人的起始值都是 1，那麼加權的意義就在於，與更大範圍的人群相比，代表性不足的人群得到的數值會大於 1，而代表性過高的群體得到的數值會小於 1。

So if our imaginary sample here was made up of 60% women and 40% men, pollsters would make the women count less, and the men count more, to match the fact that about 52% of

是以，如果我們假想的樣本是由 60% 的女性和 40% 的男性組成，那麼民調機構就會減少女性的人數，增加男性的人數，以符合大約 52% 的女性和 40% 的男性的事實。

US voters are women, while 48% are men.

美國選民中女性佔 48%，男性佔 48%。

They repeat this for factors like age, and race, and geographic location too, until each individual is weighted in a way that makes the sample a good stand-in for the larger population it represents.

他們對年齡、種族和地理位置等因素進行重複計算，直到每個人的權重都能使樣本成為其所代表的更大人口的良好替身。

Recently, pollsters started consistently weighting for education too.

最近，民調機構也開始持續增加教育權重。

In the 2016 election, some state polls underestimated Donald Trump's support among non-college educated people, an oversight that resulted in an election outcome few saw coming.

在 2016 年大選中，一些州的民意調查低估了唐納德-特朗普在未受過大學教育的人群中的支持率，這一疏忽導致了很少有人預料到的選舉結果。

Weighting respondents based on how their education level matches the general population is intended to help solve for that.

根據受訪者的教育水準與普通人群的匹配程度對其進行加權，旨在幫助解決這一問題。

In the 2024 election, pollsters are increasingly weighting for things like how people voted in past elections, and party affiliation too, to avoid any other ways they could be over or underrepresented a candidate's supporters.

在 2024 年的選舉中，民調機構會越來越多地考慮人們在過去選舉中的投票情況以及黨派歸屬等因素，以避免以其他方式過多或過少代表候選人的支持者。

But the thing is, weighting a sample to match the general US adult population is pretty simple.

但問題是，對樣本進行加權，使其與美國成年人口的總體情況相匹配是非常簡單的。

Through sources like the US Census, pollsters know how many people are in each age group, or gender, or racial group, or whether someone went to college.

通過美國人口普查等管道，民調機構可以瞭解每個年齡段、性別、種族或是否上過大學的人數。

But for a poll to be a precise prediction of an election outcome, pollsters are attempting to weight against an unknown population, the people who will actually vote in the future, on election day.

但是，要想使民意調查準確預測選舉結果，民意調查人員必須對未知人群（即未來在選舉日真正投票的人群）進行權重分析。

There's no guarantee that anyone surveyed ahead of an election will actually vote.

誰也不能保證在選舉前接受調查的人會真正投票。

Some polls make educated guesses, counting people more who say they are likely to vote, or who are registered to vote, or who have voted in the past.

有些民意調查是有根據的猜測，更多地計算那些自稱可能投票、登記投票或過去投過票的人。

But at most, only two-thirds of Americans of voting age turn out to vote.

但最多隻有三分之二達到投票年齡的美國人参加投票。

And pollsters can only make informed guesses on who those people will be.

而民調機構只能對這些人是誰做出有根據的猜測。

Polls are good for a lot of things, at capturing where the population stands on big issues, or figuring out which states are really going to be decisive in the election outcome.

民意調查對很多事情都有好處，它可以捕捉民眾在重大問題上的立場，或者找出哪些州真正會對選舉結果起決定性作用。

But when the polls on voting choice are as close as they are in this election, the main thing they tell us is simply that the race is close, and the only way we'll know who will win is to pay less attention to the polling news cycle, and wait until the votes are counted.

但是，當投票選擇的民意調查像這次大選一樣接近時，它們告訴我們的主要事情僅僅是競爭很激烈，而我們要想知道誰會獲勝，唯一的辦法就是減少對民調新聞週期的關注，等到選票統計出來之後再做決定。

Before you go, I want to tell you about Vox's new membership program.

在你們離開之前，我想向你們介紹一下 Vox 的新會員計劃。

We put this video together as quickly as we could when we realized there was a lot of curiosity and confusion and obsession over the election polls.

當我們意識到人們對選舉民調充滿好奇、困惑和痴迷時，我們以最快的速度製作了這段視頻。

This kind of journalism takes a lot of work, interviewing experts, writing, editing, and animating.

這種新聞報道需要大量的工作，包括採訪專家、寫作、編輯和動畫製作。

Our membership program is the best way to support this kind of work, both here on our

我們的會員計劃是支持此類工作的最佳方式，無論是在我們的

YouTube channel, but also on Vox's news site.

YouTube 頻道，同時也在 Vox 的新聞網站上發佈。

If you join, you'll get access to more articles from Vox's newsroom and other member-only benefits.

如果您加入，您將可以訪問 Vox 新聞室的更多文章，並享受其他會員專享福利。

I hope you'll consider becoming a member by going to the link on the screen or the one in the video description below.

我希望您能考慮成為我們的會員，請點擊螢幕上的鏈接或下面視頻描述中的鏈接。