Why not just say “The democrats are more likely than not to win the next election?”
Because that’s four extra syllables, and it shifts emphasis from the statement to the meta-statement about probability.
(These aren’t good reasons to speak imprecisely, but it’s a broadly observed fact of linguistics that people favor shorter ways of saying things when their meaning is sufficiently similar.)
Because that’s four extra syllables, and it shifts emphasis from the statement to the meta-statement about probability.
(These aren’t good reasons to speak imprecisely, but it’s a broadly observed fact of linguistics that people favor shorter ways of saying things when their meaning is sufficiently similar.)