You could always link to the actual survey:
http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2011/03/survey
When will pollsters stop using "fair" as a measure of popularity? All it does it skew the results negative, since news organizations will inevitably take "fair" to be negative, when I would argue it's pretty much the same as saying "no opinion".
Brown's choices were excellent, good, ONLY fair or poor. Not simply "fair". ONLY fair has a negative connotation - not good and could be better.I think "only fair" makes it sound even more neutral than "fair" by itself. The "only" does not emphasize any negative quality (because there is no negative connotation to the word "fair")--it instead emphasizes the neutral quality. To me, "only fair" is how you describe the weather when it's neither overcast nor sunny.
TBH, given that the poll gives Obama 43% approval in
Rhode Island, it's hard to take any of it seriously. Not that one would really expect otherwise from a Brown poll, o/c.
Because it's idiotic and does not conform to common usage of words. No one should continue a stupid (as well as misleading and actively bad) practice simply because it's how things have always been done.
