[EM] percentage support continued

[James Green-Armytage]

>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