underwater

[Benjamin Barrett]

This is an interesting development. You take the values at time X as the base and then refer to current values as underwater if they are less than the base. (The poll report is at http://www.langerresearch.com/uploads/1127a19FavorabilityNo19.pdf, page 2.)

What seems insipid about this is that the base values are at arbitrary points in time. This poll is using base values between January 8 and February 26 for the different candidates.

A great expression if you're a political (or economic) spinner, I suppose.

Benjamin Barrett
Seattle, WA

On Mar 6, 2012, at 11:35 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:

> I've posted on this before, but mostly in reference to market value.
> However, the usage of the term is spreading rapidly in reference to
> political approval rates for candidates, issues, measures, etc.
> 
> http://goo.gl/SWzMa
>> All four Republican contenders remain underwater in overall
>> favorability in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, marking the
>> difficulties the survivor may face against Barack Obama. More
>> Americans hold negative than positive views of Romney by a 10-point
>> margin, Rick Santorum by 8 points, Ron Paul by 9 points and Newt
>> Gingrich by a whopping 33 points.

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