A significant majority of British adults support the UK government’s ban on imported goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, a YouGov survey has revealed.
That was a flippant remark - I know it’s not the same. I still wouldn’t call it anything like an overwhelming majority. Excluding undecideds when there are so many is dishonest.
When deciding policy, political parties only care about the people who will vote based on that policy, or could be induced to vote based on that policy. Undecided voters might as well not exist (when they stay undecided). The normal definition of majority in politics is with undecideds excluded, and they’re typically only excluded by people dishonestly trying to downplay their opponents’ support. In local elections, people who are eligible to vote but stay home typically outnumber people who do vote, but council seats are still given to people who win a majority, even though it’s a tiny slice of the people eligible to vote who voted for them.
It’s fine if you’re just learning that this is the normal definition in political contexts just now, but you’re going to get into a lot of arguments if you use different definitions of words to the ones the people you’re communicating with are.
You’ve started talking about political parties deciding policy, which is one way of looking at news, but not the way I’m thinking about it. I am, after all, not a politician or advising any of them :)
It’s pretty obviously a political article and is explicitly making the case that Ed Milliband was right to make the policy change he did last week, so that’s the frame of reference the article’s expecting to be read from, and that means using the definitions of words that fit that frame of reference.
Yes, and as I’ve said, it’s only appearing misleading because you’re using a different definition of majority than the one the article was expecting you to use. If you were using the correct definition for a political context that a typical novaramedia reader would know they were using, it couldn’t be misleading as under that definition, the article is entirely correct.
That was a flippant remark - I know it’s not the same. I still wouldn’t call it anything like an overwhelming majority. Excluding undecideds when there are so many is dishonest.
When deciding policy, political parties only care about the people who will vote based on that policy, or could be induced to vote based on that policy. Undecided voters might as well not exist (when they stay undecided). The normal definition of majority in politics is with undecideds excluded, and they’re typically only excluded by people dishonestly trying to downplay their opponents’ support. In local elections, people who are eligible to vote but stay home typically outnumber people who do vote, but council seats are still given to people who win a majority, even though it’s a tiny slice of the people eligible to vote who voted for them.
It’s fine if you’re just learning that this is the normal definition in political contexts just now, but you’re going to get into a lot of arguments if you use different definitions of words to the ones the people you’re communicating with are.
You’ve started talking about political parties deciding policy, which is one way of looking at news, but not the way I’m thinking about it. I am, after all, not a politician or advising any of them :)
It’s pretty obviously a political article and is explicitly making the case that Ed Milliband was right to make the policy change he did last week, so that’s the frame of reference the article’s expecting to be read from, and that means using the definitions of words that fit that frame of reference.
Do you understand why I think it’s misleading?
Yes, and as I’ve said, it’s only appearing misleading because you’re using a different definition of majority than the one the article was expecting you to use. If you were using the correct definition for a political context that a typical novaramedia reader would know they were using, it couldn’t be misleading as under that definition, the article is entirely correct.