+9 -8 = +1, why is it still a "no"?

I'm trying to arrange a betrothal, and under the opinions I can count 9 '+' and 8 '-', but the result is still "no".

I've no clue what's going on, then.

There are two possible reasons, but they are both caused by the awful representation of opinion calculations in the CK UI.

First of all, five negatives is actually a representation of "absolutelly not, under no circumstances". It's a trump, it cannot be beaten no matter how many positives you have.

Secondly, the positives and negatives (represented by +/-) are rounded off in the UI, but behind the scenes they are precise numbers. Ignoring that -5 is a trump, it is possible that the calculation is as follows:

(2.6 + 1.6 + 3.6) - (5.0 + 2.4 + 1.4) = -1.0

... thus "beating" your 9 plus'es in the GUI.

I'm not sure how they round it off, for all we know, they could be converting to base-10, and then just rounding down to nearest integer. However, they do calculate with larger numbers, and those numbers do get rounded off before they present it in the GUI.