The authors’ research builds on prior work by Gilens, who painstakingly collected public-opinion polls on nearly 2,000 policy questions from 1981 to 2002. The pair then examined whether America’s federal government adopted the policy in question within four years of the survey, and tracked how closely the outcome matched the preferences of voters at different points of the income distribution.
两位作者的研究基于吉伦斯之前的工作的基础上。吉伦斯费尽心思收集了从1981年到2002年间近2,000个政策问题的民意调查。接着，两人考察了美国联邦政府是否在调查后四年内采取了被调查政策，并追踪了结果与位于收入分配不同区位的选民的偏好的匹配程度。