VOA常速英语:For Pennsylvania Pollster Your Opinion is Everything(翻译)

She’s up 6%.No, he’s up 6%.If they vary so much, can we trust political polls?
她的支持率上升了6%。不，他的支持率上升了6%。如果差距这么大，我们还能相信政治民调吗？

“Absolutely, absolutely.”
“当然能，当然能。”

David Dutwin is in charge of methodology at SSRS,a survey firm where hundreds of interviewers work on 20 opinion polls a day.
大卫.达特文在SSRS主管调查方法，SSRS是一家调查公司，每天有上百名采访者进行20个民意调查。

“Hello, ma’am, my name is Russell Lance,”Internet polls are unreliable, door-to-door polling costs too much, so companies use phones.But, “Lots of things have changed.”
“女士，您好，我名叫拉塞尔.兰斯，”网络民意调查不可信，挨家挨户地调查花费又太高，因此许多公司使用电话进行调查。但是，“很多事情都变了。”

“Part of the problem is in your pocket, 9 out of 10 of us own this, instead of this, hello.”
“一部分问题在你的口袋里，我们十分之九的人使用这个，而不是这个。喂。”

“Half of the United States’ households don’t own a landline telephone anymore.”
“美国有一半的家庭都不再使用固定电话了。”

“Hello, my name is Valentina Martinez.”
“您好，我名叫瓦伦蒂娜.马丁尼兹。”

Laws forbid recorded calls on mobiles,so real people have to do the interview, and will met with this:
法律不允许给移动电话录音，所以需要真人进行采访，但他们会遇到以下情况：

“‘A call when I’m busy’, and then they just hang up right away.”
“‘我很忙’，然后他们就直接挂断电话。”

“They don’t have the time, they’re busy, they’re driving.”
“他们没有时间，他们很忙，他们在开车。”

In fact, it takes up to 40 calls to get one single interview.
事实上，需要打多达40个电话才能得到一个采访。

“Oh, I’m sorry ma’am, when will be the available time to call you?”
“不好意思，女士，您什么时候有时间，我再打给您？”

But calling a cell has its benefits, says Courtney Kennedy of Pew Research.
皮尤研究中心的考特尼.肯尼迪说，打给手机是有好处的。

“We’re able to reach a lot of the groups who were traditionally hard to reach,such as young adults, African Americans, Hispanics, that we really struggle to reach on landlines.”
“我们能够联系上之前难以联系上的群体，例如青壮年、非裔美国人、西班牙裔等用座机努力想联系上的群体。”

Participants are typically reluctant to give their opinions on issues.But this election, interviewers say they can’t get them to stop talking.
通常，参与者都不愿意给出他们对某些事的意见。但采访者说，关于这次选举他们却滔滔不绝。

“Yes, oh my gosh, yes.”
“是，天哪，是这样。”

Interviewers like Martinez ask the same questions verbatim, so the answers are statistically valid.1000 participants is the magic number, because the sample that size has the same demographics as the US population.And the combine results carry a low 3% margin of error,which is crucial to remember when looking at the fluctuating polls.
像马丁尼兹这样的采访者们将同样的问题逐字逐句地念出来，因此在统计学上来说，答案是有效的。1000个参与者是一个魔术数字，因为这样大小的样本和美国人口的统计规模是一样的。综合结果的误差范围低至3%，这对于波动的投票来说是非常重要的。