The conclusion is, indeed, that "[the election results] should not be taken to indicate that the [last pre-election] poll was inaccurate." Okay, how does the author arrive at that conclusion?

• First, we are given the results of the pre-election poll: MOST voters believe that the government needs to address 1) pollution, 2) crime, and 3) unemployment (in that order of importance)
• In the actual election, candidates from parties strongly against pollution were defeated, and candidates from parties that OPPOSED anti-pollution legislation were elected.

This election result seems to go against the pre-election poll. If pollution is the most important problem for most voters, why would they elect people who are not likely to address the pollution problem? We need something that explains this apparent discrepancy while SUPPORTING the conclusion that the pre-election polls should be taken as accurate...


The discrepancy is not resolved by this fact. Even if SOME voters don't think pollution needs to be reduced, MOST voters think that pollution is the most important problem. Thus, it is still surprising that the voters elected people from parties that OPPOSE anti-pollution legislation. (A) can be eliminated.


Again, this does not resolve the discrepancy. In fact, this makes the discrepancy even more significant. If most voters think pollution is the most important problem, wouldn't they WANT to elect candidates with strong anti-pollution records? Eliminate (B).


The discrepancy exists regardless of whether the candidates differed on other issues. The discrepancy is that voters elected candidates who seemingly would not address the problem that voters care about the most. Why? Choice (C) does not help answer this question and can be eliminated.


Now we're on to something... Imagine a typical voter who believes that the three most important problems to address are pollution, crime, and unemployment, in that order. On one hand, you have Candidate A, who doesn't seem to care about reducing pollution but appears to be strong against crime and unemployment. On the other hand, you have Candidate B, who seems to be strong against pollution, but doesn't seem to be strong against crime and unemployment. Would you rather have the first priority addressed without addressing the second or third priorities? Or are you willing to sacrifice the top priority if it means addressing the other two? You might decide that 2 out of 3 is better than 1 out of 3, even if that means sacrificing your top priority. This would explain the apparent discrepancy, so (D) looks good.


Remember, we are looking for a statement that SUPPORTS the conclusion that pre-election poll was accurate. By suggesting that the poll was not comprehensive, this statement gives us further reason to DOUBT the accuracy of the pre-election polls. This choice is tempting because it seems to offer a possible explanation for the discrepancy... perhaps most voters who care about crime, unemployment, or other issues did not participate in the poll, making it seem like most voters in Whippleton care about pollution, when in fact most voters (including those not polled) care more about other issues. If (E) is true, we only know that many voters did not participate in the pre-election poll. In order for this to explain the discrepancy, we have to ASSUME that most of the voters who did not participate were voters who do not think pollution is the top priority. And if we make this assumption to explain the discrepancy, we are sacrificing the conclusion by suggesting that the pre-election poll was not accurate. (E) must be eliminated.

I hope that helps!
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Polls said people want government to work on pollution, crime, and unemployment,in order of importance.

Elections ruled out those people who were strongly supporting anti pollution.

Still elections were correct. We need to find out why.

We can say may be these elections show some other benefit of selecting those who were opposing anti pollution laws.

(A) some voters in Whippleton do not believe that pollution needs to be reduced. --> Some donot believe, what about others? We don't know.

(B) every candidate who was defeated had a strong antipollution record --> We already know this. But it is not telling us reason that elections were accurate.

(C) there were no issues other than crime, unemployment, and pollution on which the candidates had significant differences of opinion. --> Fine, we don't care even if there were. Then why still those supporters got rejected.

(D) all the candidates who were elected were perceived as being stronger against both crime and unemployment than the candidates who were defeated. --> Benefits of two problems is more than just one. So, that is why they chose the opposing party. Since, two problems out of three could be solved.

(E) many of the people who voted in the election refused to participate in the poll. --> Tempting BUT we are given "most voters believe that" and not most people. Hence, incorrect.



MY friend, this statement talks about many people while the argument talks abut most voters. That means, we are talking about voters only out of those pre polls. Hence, this statement is incorrect.
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Imo D
Wining candidates had good reputation to reduce unemployment and crimes.
Losing candidates did not have such a reputation against unemployment and crimes.

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
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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.

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
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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 ?

"People who voted" = "voters"... they are the same thing.
How would you define "voter" - a person who votes lmao.

I think the real explanation is that the poll is inaccurate b/c it did not accurately represent the voter sentiments.

Stated another way: Because most "voters"/ "people who voted" didn't participate in the poll, the poll was not representative of the voter sentiment. Therefore, the poll was inaccurate.

IMO, option E should be eliminated easily.

Paraphrase : The discrepancy in the election does not mean that the poll INACCURATE, because...

It doesn't make sense if we fill it with E, right?
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abhimahna
Dear, " Most People who voted " is exactly the same as " Most voters" , so the reason you give why " E " is not correct, is wrong !