>As for James' questions, it's obvious that in an election that measures
>support for all candidates, the voting population is expressing 100% of
>available "support". The question is how to use that voting method to
>quantify that support in percentage terms, split for each available
>candidate. The concept is supposed to be fuzzy, because the question
>is how to unfuzzify it. As for how to define polling, I mean surveys -
>either one-time, or "tracking" surveys, that attempt to communicate
>proportional support in a voting population among several choices. The
>general intent is to communicate how "close" a variety of choices are
>to "winning".
I don't think that "proportional support" should "communicate how
'close'
a variety of choices are
to 'winning'."
Example:
35%: gay marriage > civil unions > neither
6%: civil unions > gay marriage > neither
19%: civil unions > neither > gay marriage
40%: neither > civil unions > gay marriage
Given the above example, it makes sense for me to say that gay marriage
legislation has 35% support, civil union legislation has 25% support, and
the status quo has 40% support. However, that doesn't mean that the status
quo is or should be the closest to winning (since civil union legislation
is a Condorcet winner).
Sincerely,
James
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