The first pre-election poll, or "straw vote", as it was then called, was conducted by the Harrisburg Pennsylvanian before the 1824 presidential election. This straw vote and the many that followed it really registered nothing but local opinion. However, as communications improved and elections were won by closer and closer margins, newspapers and journals tried desperately to satisfy their readers’ curiosity in more reliable ways.

　　Before the 1928 elections, no fewer than eighty-five publications made private inquiries, generally by means of questionaires(問卷、調查表)sent to subscribers(訂戶)and by telephone surveys. The principle common to all these inquiries was that they depended on quantity rather than quality; little effort was made to reach representatives of all segments(部分)of the population. Still, the erroneous belief persisted that the greater the number of questionaires, the more accurate the results would be. The record was held by the American monthly Literary Digest, which sent out millions of postcards with short and pointed questions before each election, and received many hundreds of thousands of replies. In fact, in 1932, the Literary Digest’s forecast was off by only 1 percent.

　　In view of such striking achievements, it seemed rather impertinent(粗魯的)for the young American journalist, George Gallup,to claim that large numbers were irrelevant, and that equally accurate or better predictions could be made with a small but carefully selected sample of the population and a small team of skilled interviewers.

　　In 1936, it took Gallup a long time to convince thirty-five newspaper editors that his system was much cheaper than the customary mass inquiries and that it could provide surprisingly accurate predictions. The editors finally agreed, on condition that if Gallup's predictions were less accurate than those obtained by the tried method of the Literary Digest, he would have to refund(賠償)the entire cost of the investigation. Although the Literary Digest broke its own record by obtaining two million replies to its electoral postcards that year, its prediction was wrong by 19 percent, whereas Gallup's was off by less than 1 percent.

　　1.From the passage we know that the earlies pre-election polls were _____ in reflecting the public opinions.

　　A. meaningful

　　B. inaccurate

　　C. satisfying

　　D. successful

　　答案B.文章第一段告訴我們，最初的選舉前的民意測驗反映的僅僅是地方性的、局部的意見，由此可見它們在反映民意方面是不夠準確的。

　　2.All of the following are the characteristics of the inquiries are mentioned in the second paragraph except _____.

　　A. a large number of questionaires were sent out

　　B. quantity rather than quality was emphasized

　　C. almost no effort was made to interview people from every walk of life

　　D. every publication in America got involved

　　答案D.從文章第二段可知，這些調查共同的特點是重量不重質，錯誤地認為發出去的問卷越多結果就越準確，而且調查的對象缺乏廣泛性。由此可見，A，B，C三項都是這些民意調查的特點，而D項既不符合事實，也談不上是什么特點。

　　3.We can infer from the passage that in the beginning the newspaper editors were _____ Gallup's system.

　　A. doubtful of

　　B. enthusiastic about

　　C. displeased with

　　D. indignant at

　　答案A.由文章第四段可知，蓋洛普花了很長時間才說服35位報紙編輯采用他的調查方法。由此可斷定，對他的方法編輯們起初是持懷疑態度的。B項不符合事實，C項和D項在文中也找不到依據。

　　4.We can infer from the passage that in the early 1930s _____.

　　A. Gallup was a famous journalist

　　B. the Literary Digest like to break records

　　C. the Literary Digest was the biggest monthly in America

　　D. the method of the Literary Digest was popular and well-received

　　答案D.蓋洛普當時只是個年輕的記者，費了很大的勁才說服別人采用他的調查方法，所以A項是不正確的。文中雖然兩次提到《文摘》月刊保持和打破紀錄，但不能由此推斷它喜歡破紀錄，所以B項也不是正確答案。C項在文中找不到依據，所以也不對。只有D項是正確的推論，因為文章第二段的最后一句話告訴我們，《文摘》對1932年選舉的預測誤差僅為百分之一，而且第四段又說編輯們給蓋洛普提的條件是如果他的預測不如《文摘》準確，他就得掏錢負擔整個調查的費用，可見《文摘》采用的方法是為大多數人所接受的。

　　5.Gallup's system proved to be _____.

　　A. much cheaper

　　B. a great failure

　　C. a huge success

　　D. much costly

　　答案C.看懂文章的最后一句即可確定正確答案是C. whereas Gallup's was off by less than 1 percent意為“而蓋洛普的預測誤差不到百分之一”。

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