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According to the last pre-election poll in Whippleton, most voters
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Updated on: 04 Sep 2018, 22:29
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Question Stats:
62% (01:44) correct 38% (01:54) wrong based on 1912 sessions
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Which of the following most logically completes the passage?
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 __________.
(A) some voters in Whippleton do not believe that pollution needs to be reduced
(B) every candidate who was defeated had a strong antipollution record
(C) there were no issues other than crime, unemployment, and pollution on which the candidates had significant differences of opinion
(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
This is a fill in the blank question. The word since before the blank indicates you are asked to support the preceding conclusion, so this is a Strengthen the Argument question.
The conclusion of the argument includes a double negative, which can make things a little confusing; election results do not indicate that the poll was inaccurate. In other words, even given the election results, the poll could be accurate
Step 3: Pause and State the Goal
On Strengthen questions, the goal is to find an answer that supports the conclusion. In this case, you are looking for information that supports the accuracy of the poll, which found pollution to be the most important problem, in the face of election results in which the anti-pollution party lost.
Step 4: Work from Wrong to Right
(A) If anything, this information suggests the poll may not be accurate because some voters do not care about pollution. Additionally, the poll provides results for most voters, so some voters could still believe pollution was unimportant even if most believe it is the highest priority.
(B) This information could actually lead to questioning the accuracy of the poll. One explanation for the election results could have been that the particular candidates from the anti-pollution party were not strongly anti-pollution themselves. This answer excludes that possibility.
(C) This answer does not speak to the accuracy of the poll because other issues are not included in the poll. It does suggest that voters likely did not decide based on other issues (beyond the three in the poll) because there were not significant differences between the candidates.
(D) CORRECT. Even if voters prioritize pollution in their concerns, they might care more about crime and unemployment combined than they do pollution on its own. These voters would choose a candidate who matches their views on both crime and unemployment over one who only matches only on pollution. This could explain the election results with the poll still being accurate.
(E) This information calls the accuracy of the poll into question. If many voters choose not to participate in the poll, the sample for the poll may not be representative of voters in general.
Re: According to the last pre-election poll in Whippleton, most voters
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13 Jul 2017, 19:38
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adkikani wrote:
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
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...
Quote:
(A) some voters in Whippleton do not believe that pollution needs to be reduced.
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.
Quote:
(B) every candidate who was defeated had a strong antipollution record
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).
Quote:
(C) there were no issues other than crime, unemployment, and pollution on which the candidates had significant differences of opinion
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.
Quote:
(D) all the candidates who were elected were perceived as being stronger against both crime and unemployment than the candidates who were defeated
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.
Quote:
(E) many of the people who voted in the election refused to participate in the poll
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.
Need an expert reply? Hit the request verbal experts' reply button -- and please be specific about your question. Feel free to tag @GMATNinja in your post. Priority is always given to official GMAT questions.
Re: According to the last pre-election poll in Whippleton, most voters
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28 May 2017, 11:33
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.
_________________
Re: According to the last pre-election poll in Whippleton, most voters
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29 May 2017, 05:26
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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.
david2099 wrote:
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.
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.
_________________
Re: According to the last pre-election poll in Whippleton, most voters
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29 Jun 2017, 18:32
D for me
pollution, crime, unemployment need to be discussed. loosing party discussed only pollution, but not crime and unemp. winning party though not discussed pollution that imp, but focused on crime and unemp.
_________________
Re: According to the last pre-election poll in Whippleton, most voters
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29 Jun 2017, 21:07
Imo D Wining candidates had good reputation to reduce unemployment and crimes. Losing candidates did not have such a reputation against unemployment and crimes.
_________________
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
_________________
It's the journey that brings us happiness not the destination.
Re: According to the last pre-election poll in Whippleton, most voters
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Updated on: 13 Jul 2017, 07:16
pulkitaggi wrote:
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.
Originally posted by rulingbear on 10 Jul 2017, 14:44.
Last edited by rulingbear on 13 Jul 2017, 07:16, edited 1 time in total.
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?
Re: According to the last pre-election poll in Whippleton, most voters
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11 Jul 2017, 09:12
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Lucy Phuong wrote:
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?
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.
Re: According to the last pre-election poll in Whippleton, most voters
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11 Jul 2017, 09:36
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ganand wrote:
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 ______________.
Which of the following most logically completes the passage?
(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
There seems to be some support for answer E here, and I just wanted to point out why E is not correct. E would provide a good explanation of why the poll didn't predict the election result correctly, because if many people refused to take the poll, there'd be good reason to think the poll inaccurate. But if you read the stem carefully, that's the opposite of what we're trying to do:
These results should not be taken to indicate that the poll was inaccurate, however, since ________
We're trying to find a reason why the poll could be accurate and yet the election result could still be what it was. E doesn't do that, because E suggests the poll was not accurate. Only answer D does what we want - explains why voters might still care most about pollution, as the poll says, yet vote for other candidates.
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Re: According to the last pre-election poll in Whippleton, most voters
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11 Jul 2017, 17:25
mikemcgarry wrote:
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 ?
Re: According to the last pre-election poll in Whippleton, most voters
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12 Jul 2017, 08:39
Lucy Phuong wrote:
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 ?
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
Re: According to the last pre-election poll in Whippleton, most voters
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12 Jul 2017, 11:08
abhimahna wrote:
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.
david2099 wrote:
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.
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.
"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.
Re: According to the last pre-election poll in Whippleton, most voters
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15 Oct 2017, 12:14
david2099 wrote:
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.
But we are trying to show that the polls were not inaccurate, and that the election results can be explained some other way. Sort of like a Resolve the paradox question.
_________________
Give me kudos and see what happens to your GMAT score
Re: According to the last pre-election poll in Whippleton, most voters
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21 Dec 2017, 13:00
ganand wrote:
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 ______________.
Which of the following most logically completes the passage?
(A) some voters in Whippleton do not believe that pollution needs to be reduced.
(B) every candidate who was defeated had a strong antipollution record
(C) there were no issues other than crime, unemployment, and pollution on which the candidates had significant differences of opinion
(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
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?
_________________
Re: According to the last pre-election poll in Whippleton, most voters
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05 Jan 2018, 17:49
some context and numbers are added to explain better.
pre poll- let's say 40 percent people gave importance to pollution ( green gas reduction 35 percent to crime - crime and drug from Maxico to US 25 percent said - unemployment- country side people looking for coal jobs to be back
Democratic party- only focused on pollution - so they got 40 percent votes because democrats didn't care about crime and unemployment
Republicans- trump supports didn't care about pollution of global warming but republicans gave importance to both crime reduction and unemployment - so republicans got 35 + 25= 60 percent votes and Trump party won
close
62% (01:44) correct 
First of all, I want to apologize for the typo. When 
