underwater

[Dan Goncharoff]

In other words, more than 50% of specified votes are unfavorable...
DanG


On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 12:17 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: underwater
>
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>
> I can't really decide if I agree with BB, but I know that Joel is wrong.
> Underwater favorability has nothing to do with 50%--it's the result
> where favorables are lower than unfavorables. The candidate could be
> completely unknown and have 10% favorable and 11% unfavorable and that
> would still be underwater.
>
>     VS-)
>
> On 3/7/2012 11:19 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> > Why do you compare to some base at time X, rather than to a constant
> > 50%?
> >
> >
> >   That is, a candidate is underwater if his favorable rating is
> > under 50% (or, if indifferent pollees are included, less than his
> > favorable rating)?
> > I think the use of prior, or base, times is only to show changes
> overtime, not to assert whether a candidate is or is not under waternow.
> The term is used only in the headline and the lead sentence of the second
> paragraph -- "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."
> > And if some prior base is intended, it will be important whether that is
> > a high tide, a neap tide, or a mean sea level.<br><br>
> > Joel
> >
> >
> >
> > At 3/7/2012 02:46 AM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
> >
> > 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 athttp://goo.gl/RnA7V,
> > 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.<br><br>
> > A great expression if you're a political (or economic) spinner, I
> > suppose.
> >
> > Benjamin Barrett
>
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