According to the last pre-election poll in Whippleton, most voters

Can anyone explain that why E is wrong? Because if most of the people who voted in the election are those who did not participated in the poll then we can not say that poll results are inaccurate.

Hi GMATNinja / GMATNinja2

I was able to comprehend argument but was not able to select OA correctly.

Argument: Most voters believe that in order for candidates to win elections, they must
first address pollution, then crime, and lastly unemployment.

However, in actual election, candidates who won where those who opposed to reduce pollution.

These results are accurate because .. (main conclusion of argument)

I went through abhimahna s explanation
but priority wise the other two factors are less important than pollution. let me know how to approach POE here.

WR,
Arpit

Please help between option D and E??

The answer is definitely D, that all winners were strong on 2/3rd of the 3 most important issues is enough explanation for their victory in spite of the poll predicting otherwise.
E is not adding much to the argument as it is saying that many voters did not participate in the poll, while the prompt already said most of the voters responded in the poll. The many referred to in E does not mean most, many may be relatively few to most.
Although this is in the paradox resolution category, I would classify it as weakening/strengthening, and the extreme and absolute signifiers that are usually present in the weakening/strengthening answers apply here as well. In this case, it is the 'all' in (D) all the candidates who were elected were perceived as being stronger against both crime and unemployment than the candidates who were defeated.
Note that this answer serves a dual purpose in other to resolve the paradox:
1. It strengthens the result of the election as explained above
2. It weakens the hypothetical prediction from the poll (see above)

I wouldn't be surprised if many resolve the paradox CRs follow this format.

Hi experts GMATNinja, GMATNinjaTwo, mikemcgarry, could you please help solve my concern? Thank you.

I'm confused of this phrase "in order of important". In my opinion, I understand that the phrase implies that 3 factors mentioned are arranged in an order of important (btw, why "important", but not "importance"???). And then, I wonder which order of importance should be inferred from stimulus?
- pollution > crime > employment
- or, pollution < crime < employment

Initially, I thought that the first order is correct, that's why I'm confused with option (D). If pollution is ranked the most important, then more favoring on crime and employment is not necessarily strong enough for the unexpected candidates to be elected. What do you think about this?

Dear Lucy Phuong,

I'm happy to respond. First of all, I want to apologize for the typo. When ganand posted the question, which is GMAT OG CR #626, he mistyped "important" rather than the correct word, "importance." I corrected that typo in the above text. It's extremely important to be completely accurate in posting the text of official questions.

You're also correct that there is potentially something a little bit vague here. Typically, for clarity, people would often say "in the order of increasing importance" or "in the order of decreasing importance." I would say that we can thinking about it this way. When we are taking about "order," some list in the "order of [noun]," order is fundamentally numerical in nature. Every order list has a first element, a second element, and so forth. Thus, in some formal way, the enumeration of elements on a list is like counting the positive integers. Naturally, we are free to count forward or backwards, but what's the default standard way to count? Of course, forward, starting with 1. Thus, the default way of giving an ordered list starts in the same say, with the 1st element, then the 2nd element, etc.

With this in mind, it's clear that pollution is the #1 problem, crime is #2, and unemployment is #3.

Does all this make sense?
Mike

Thanks Mike +kudos to you

Just wanna make sure whether I understand your post. So I guess you suggest the order of important should be, by default, arranged this way: pollution < crime < unemployment ?

Dear Lucy Phuong,

I'm happy to respond.

My friend, I am not sure how you are using the inequalities signs. Are you using them as true inequality signs or as substitute arrows? With all due respect, your use of the inequality signs is considerably more ambiguous than anything about the text.

The order in the text implies
pollution = #1 priority, the most important, the greatest importance, the highest priority
crime = #2 priority
unemployment = #3 priority, the least important of the three

Does this make sense?
Mike

According to the last pre-election poll in Whippleton, most voters believe that the three problems government needs to address, in order of importance, are pollution, crime, and unemployment. Yet in the election, candidates from parties perceived as strongly against pollution were defeated, while those elected were all from parties with a history of opposing legislation designed to reduce pollution. These results should not be taken to indicate that the poll was inaccurate, however, since __________.

We need to think of reasons to why does the author say that the results should not be taken to indicate that the pool was inaccurate.

(A) some voters in Whippleton do not believe that pollution needs to be reduced - if some voters do not believe that pollution needs to be reduced, these voters could have voted for either parties. Maybe the voter could have voted for the party whose candidates were perceived as strongly against pollution because this party might have worked on addressing problems of crime and unemployment. The voter could also have voted for the parties which had a long history of opposing legislation designed to reduce pollution, because that is all that mattered to the voter. However, this does not give a reason as to why the polls should not be considered as inaccurate despite showing the results against what was expected. Additionally, the premise mentions that 'most' voters believe. This answer choice just provides additional information by stating that some voters do not believe - Reject

(B) every candidate who was defeated had a strong antipollution record - Repeats the premise. Does not give a reason for not doubting the polls accuracy. - Reject

(C) there were no issues other than crime, unemployment, and pollution on which the candidates had significant differences of opinion - Though this might tell us that voters had to make a choice in voting for the candidates that helped further the cause that voters believed in, which in this case was address problems of pollution, crime and unemployment in order of importance. If the candidates that voters needed to choose from had significant difference of opinions only in these 3 areas, then this could be the reason that some candidates won and some lost. Though, this does not provide a reason for not doubting the accuracy of the polls. - Reject

(D) all the candidates who were elected were perceived as being stronger against both crime and unemployment than the candidates who were defeated - Since the order of importance of problems that voters believed should be addressed by the winning parties was pollution, crime and unemployment. Just because the party which lost was perceived strongly to reduce pollution doesn't make the poll inaccurate. The voters chose the other candidates because these candidates were perceived as being stronger against both crime and unemployment than the candidates who were defeated. This does give us a reason not to doubt the accuracy of the poll. The candidates won fair and square in lines with what the voters believed in Bingo!

(E) many of the people who voted in the election refused to participate in the poll - Thus, there were few people who participated in the poll. Thus the poll is not fully representative of the voter's belief. The author says that polls should not be considered inaccurate and our job is to find a reason why does the author say so. This option tries to void the conclusion itself, stating that what the author is stating around accuracy of poll is plain wrong. - Reject

Some kudos would do no harm A thorough analysis of my post would just help me reach 700+!

According to the pre-election poll-
Most voters believe that the three problems the government needs to address, in order of importance, are pollution, crime, and unemployment.
Yet, candidates who were against pollution were defeated and candidates from parties with a history of opposing legislation designed to reduce pollution were elected.
However, these results do not indicate that the poll was inaccurate BECAUSE-
We need to find an option that tells us why candidates from parties with a history of opposing legislation designed to reduce pollution were elected and why candidates who were against pollution were defeated.

(A) some voters in Whippleton do not believe that pollution needs to be reduced
We cannot generalize based on what some voters believed. Eliminate.

(B) every candidate who was defeated had a strong antipollution record.
It is already stated in the information given that - candidates from parties perceived as strongly against pollution were defeated.
B doesn’t tell us why the poll cannot be considered inaccurate. Eliminate.

(C) there were no issues other than crime, unemployment, and pollution on which the candidates had significant differences of opinion.
Why were the candidates who were against pollution defeated? C doesn’t tell us why the other candidates were elected. Eliminate.

(D) all the candidates who were elected were perceived as being stronger against both crime and unemployment than the candidates who were defeated
This tells us the reason why we should consider the poll result accurate.
Even though the candidates were from parties with a history of opposing legislation designed to reduce pollution, they were stronger against both crime and unemployment than the candidates who were defeated. Correct.

(E) many of the people who voted in the election refused to participate in the poll
If anything, this only tells us why the poll result shouldn’t be considered accurate. Eliminate.

Vishnupriya
GMAT Verbal SME

abhimahna mikemcgarry IanStewart
GMATNinja
Hi Experts,

I have read all the arguments presented for D, but I am still confused. Please help me out.
My reasoning:

Conclusion: These results should not be taken to indicate that the poll was inaccurate, however.
Pre-Thinking: The candidates selected are perceived as strongly in a combination of issues but candidates not selected focus or are perceived as strongly only on individual issues.

Option:
(D) all the candidates who were elected were perceived as being stronger against both crime and unemployment than the candidates who were defeated
Now, this option is along my pre-thinking but some words make me think otherwise.
The option suggests that all the candidates who were elected were perceived as being stronger against both crime and unemployment than non-selected. The word stronger implies that the ones not selected were perceived as being less stronger for these issues.

Now, this becomes an ambiguous territory.
Consider this:
Is (Strong pollution + less strong crime + less strong unemployment) < (Strong Crime+ Strong unemployment + less strong pollution) ?
The adjective stronger confuses me because it becomes a case of quantifying the order of importance in a way so that we can objectively compare combinations of issues with the degree of importance of candidates for these issues.

A candidate can be perceived as being focusing on all three issues with say strongly than other candidates on pollution but less strongly than other candidates on crime and unemployment. It fits option D but how can we decide that it explains the situation? The option doesn't even mention if people perceive a combination of say crime and unemployment more strongly than say just pollution.

Hi IanStewart

Taking your approach that we need to prove the the pre-election poll is accurate . I selected (C) since this options shows that the pre-election issues vs election issues were correctly identified , giving support to the idea that the pre poll was accurate.

In my view Option D - does nothing to suggest why the poll is correct .

Could you please correct my understanding ?

Thank you

The stem tells us, approximately:

• a poll says voters care most about, in order, pollution, crime, and unemployment
• the party with the worst pollution policies won
• still, the poll was accurate

Answer C tells us the parties had the same positions on every issue besides pollution, crime and unemployment. So even if voters cared about other issues, they wouldn't be able to base their votes on those issues -- the candidates were all the same. So if C is true, voters were basing their voting decisions on pollution, crime, and unemployment alone (assuming they were using policy differences as the basis for their votes). That still leaves us with a paradox: voters care most about pollution, but voted for the worst party on pollution. It still seems there's something wrong with the poll, so answer C doesn't help resolve the apparent paradox.

We want an answer that explains why the poll might be accurate -- that is, we want to assume voters truly care most about pollution -- but why voters might still have voted for the worst party on pollution. And if there are three issues voters care about, and voters care nearly equally about all three, then voters might still vote for the party best on their #2 and #3 issues, even if that party is worst on their #1 issue. That's how the poll can correctly report that voters care most about pollution, and yet we still observe the voting behaviour described in the stem, so D is right.

There are other possible answers that could have been right here -- for example, if many voters didn't care much about policy differences when voting (if they chose the most likeable candidate, say), that would also explain how this poll could be accurate, yet the worst pollution party won.

I think your understanding of the argument is correct, but I think you're looking for an answer choice that is stronger than what we actually need. I think you're looking for an answer that conclusively proves the poll was accurate. We don't need an answer that does nearly that much. The double-negative in the wording before the underline is potentially confusing, but rephrasing that part of the question, it says "Even though voters voted this way, the poll might still have been accurate because..." The right answer merely needs to suggest a reason why the poll might have been accurate despite the election result. And answer D does that, because as you point out, it's possible that the inequality I quote above is true -- it's not certain to be true, but we don't need it to be here.

Thanks, IanStewart for your explanation.

I think I understand my fault. I took "not inaccurate" to mean as accurate. While analyzing the argument, I thought the answer would provide a more concrete relationship between the issues and voters' care toward the issues. That's why the reasoning of option D felt a bit shaky and open to interpretation.

KarishmaB GMATNinja

Why E is incorrect?

(D) all the candidates who were elected were perceived as being stronger against both crime and unemployment than the candidates who were defeated

(E) many of the people who voted in the election refused to participate in the poll
If people who participated in election were different from people who took the poll, the result of poll would be different from the election results. This statement supports that poll result could be considered accurate.
I didn't understand how poll is inaccurate according to this statement.

For D, If the order of importance (pollution, crime and unemployment) is already defined in the passage, then the statement " candidates who were elected were perceived as being stronger against both crime and unemployment than the candidates who were defeated" does not change the fact that pollution was the top priority. So this statement doesn't explain the apparent paradox.

Starting with (D): yes, the passage tells us that pollution was the most important issue, and that crime and unemployment were less important. However, we don't know how the combination of crime and unemployment stacks up against the single issue of pollution. Perhaps voters were willing to compromise on the pollution issue and support candidates who were well-aligned on the other two issues.

So, is (D) a smoking gun that absolutely proves that the poll was accurate? No, but that's ok. (D) gives us a reason why it might be accurate, despite the lack of alignment on the pollution issue. That's enough to make (D) the correct answer choice.

As for (E): we're looking for a reason to show that the poll is accurate in reporting that "most voters" held certain beliefs. (E) tells us that many voters didn't participate in the poll. If anything, that casts doubt on the accuracy of the poll's claim. Eliminate (E).

I hope that helps!