underwater

[Dan Goncharoff]

The 50% comes in when you look at the results that have an impact on the
calculation of "net negative". The 79% in your example clearly don't
matter; only 21% do, and more than half of the 21% were negative.

DanG


On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 12:40 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
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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