Last week, we asked you to invent historical apps. You did, and answers ranged from ancient times through the Middle Ages and into the heart of the American Revolution.
This week, we’re trading in history for current events. With the addition of Paul Ryan to the Republican ticket and the heightened rhetoric over Joe Biden’s American-in-chains remarks and Mitt Romney’s tax returns, the Presidential-election season is in full swing. That also means that pollsters become, at least for a little while, some of the most important figures in our democracy. They’ll be asking questions of ordinary Americans almost every day. The problem is that they’ll be asking the same questions, over and over again. Which candidate do you plan to vote for? Are you likely to vote? How important, on a scale of one to five, is the economy? And so forth.
Pollsters traffic in questions, but so do we, and so do all of you. So here’s this week’s contest: If you were a pollster, what single question would you like to ask the American people? It can be political, but it doesn’t have to be, as we cast a wider net. It can be a yes-or-no question, but it doesn’t have to be, as we employ a staff of thousands to tally answers.
So that’s that. Write your poll question, put it into a tweet, and send it to us. Don’t forget to include the hashtag #tnyquestion. Questioningly runs Fridays until Monday morning, when we’ll retweet the best entries, and we’ll even pass the winning question along to the American people in the form of a poll.
Illustration by Saul Steinberg.
