underwater

[Victor Steinbok]

Only if you restrict the total to those who express an opinion when
asked. I don't know of any polls that do that--nor do I know of any
statisticians who would accept that description. The standard lingo now
is "net negative". The example I gave was 10% for, 11% against and 79%
don't know or don't care. Where does 50% come in here? Yeah, sure, it's
a possible interpretation if you're a contortionist. It's just not a
plausible one.

     VS-)

On 3/7/2012 12:31 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
> 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:
>
>> 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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>>
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