I recently heard a statement like this on the radio [not an exact quote]: “According to a CNN poll, most Americans now narrowly favor the health care law, by a 52% to 48% margin.” This statement brought to my mind the idea that most people were not strongly opposed or strongly supportive of the law, but instead supported the law in a "narrow," modest, but not especially committed, manner.
But then I realized that that is wrong; the survey indicated that the percentage who support the law narrowly exceeds the percentage who oppose it. All could be adamant in their views (so that no person “narrowly” favors the law). The careless phrasing of the statement inadvertently made it misleading in a very effective way. It says that peoples' differences of opinion about he law are modest, which is probably very far from the truth. Indeed, opinions seem to be rather strong, so the near-even balance of "pro" and "con" opinions might be said to be an extreme level of disagreement, more so than an 80% / 20% split of strong opinions.
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