Political Analyst: Polling suggests that the Labour candidate will win

Question

Political Analyst: Polling suggests that the Labour candidate will win the upcoming election. She only trails her opponent by one percentage point among male voters, but her strong favorability with women has her leading by three full percentage points among female voters.

Which of the following, if true, would most call the argument above into question?

A. Polls are not always accurate predictors of election outcomes.

B. Female voters make up less than one quarter of all voters.

C. It is not uncommon for voters to change their minds even within minutes of casting their votes.

D. Not everyone in the electorate has taken part in the referenced polls.

E. Labour candidates have traditionally been unsuccessful with this electorate.

Bunuel · Accepted Answer

VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL SOLUTION:

Whenever Critical Reasoning problems involve statistics it's a good idea to look at those statistics with a skeptical eye. Here you're told that, in the polls, the Labour candidate has a 3% advantage with women and a 1% disadvantage with men, and that leads to the conclusion that the polls suggest she will win.

But remember - a classic data flaw is that of the imbalanced groups (the classic "more people die in their beds each year than by climbing Mount Everest, so therefore it's safer to climb Everest than to take a nap?" fallacy where way almost everyone at some point lays in a bed but virtually no one climbs Mount Everest). What if, in this particular electorate, there were just way, way more males than females?

Choice (B), the correct answer , addresses that. If females are less than 1/4 of the electorate, then the three points she gains with females is fewer votes than the point she loses with males. To prove this you could set up the math as:

M > 3F (the ratio of M:F is greater than 3:1)

Then if she has a 3% advantage in the number of females but a 1% deficit in the number of males, she's looking at a total advantage of:

3F - 1M

Where, if M >3F, that becomes: 3F - (>3)F

So her advantage is negative. For that reason (B) is correct, as it shows that a 3% advantage among females is not enough to suggest an overall advantage.

Among the other choices, note the analyst's exact conclusion, that "polling suggests that the Labour candidate will win." She isn't quite claiming that the candidate will win, but instead concluding that the polling suggests that she will win. That renders tempting choices (A), (C), and (D) incorrect: with this specific conclusion it doesn't matter if the polls directly connect to a win, just that they suggest a win. Similarly (D) is irrelevant, as this conclusion isn't about historical context, but rather what these polls say about this particular election.

svasan05 · Answer

Pre-thinking:

The conclusion is about the final result of upcoming elections, but it is based on data about the leads in two mutually exclusive subsets of the electorate. We know nothing about the proportion that these subsets form of the total electorate, which is crucial in determining the conclusion. If the two subsets are approximately equal in size or the female subset is larger, then the conclusion is valid. On the other hand, if the male subset is significantly larger, then the conclusion may not be valid.

For example:

Let total electorate size = 100

Support among males:

Labour = 49.5 %
Opponent = 50.5 %

Support among females:

Labour = 51.5 %
Opponent = 48.5 %

If males = 50, females = 50

Labour = 49.5% (50) + 51.5% (50) = 50.5 votes
Opponent = 100 - 50.5 = 49.5 votes

However, if males = 75, females = 25

Total:

Labour = 49.5% (75) + 51.5% (25) = 50 votes
Opponent = 100 - 50 = 50 votes

Let us examine the answer options.

A. Polls are not always accurate predictors of election outcomes.  Even if this is true, the conclusion is only about "expectation" and not a certain prediction about the final outcome. Eliminate.

B. Female voters make up less than one quarter of all voters.  Correct answer and fits in exactly with the computations shown in our pre-thinking.

C. It is not uncommon for voters to change their minds even within minutes of casting their votes.  What happens after casting the vote is irrelevant to our conclusion. Eliminate.

D. Not everyone in the electorate has taken part in the referenced polls.  This is fine since the conclusion is only an "expectation" and it is not necessary to poll every person in the electorate to arrive at such a conclusion. Eliminate.

E. Labour candidates have traditionally been unsuccessful with this electorate.  The conclusion is a mathematical expectation about the current election - what happened in past elections is irrelevant to the calculations. Eliminate.

Hope this helps.

Hatakekakashi · Answer

Trails male by 1% point

Leads female by 3% points

If male ~ 75%
female ~ 25%

Then trails male by 7.5% and leads female by 7.5%

if female is <25% then she trails the election and is likely to lose

It is a clear B, not sure how the other options are relevant here

SinhaPriyesh · Answer

Option B is not a good choice. Somebody once told me to watch for  each and every word  in GMAT questions.

Option B: Number of Female voter are less than 1/4th of  remaining voters . I'll give you a case in which there might be two conditions.
Lets say total number of voters is 100. less than 1/4 = less than 25. Female voters is 24.

Case1: Male voters are 6 and the remaining 70 are transgender. 
 Case 1A: Transgender like labor candidate. Bingo She won.  Conclusion .
 Case 1B: Transgender don't like labor candidate.  Conclusion is flawed .

Case2:Male voters are 76. 0 Transgender.
  Conclusion is flawed .

Why we are assuming that the remaining voters are men to prove option B as correct answer?

Option D: Not everyone in the electorate has taken part in the referenced polls. Bingo. The statistics can't be used to create a conclusion. Simple.  Conclusion is flawed.

Please. I want somebody to disprove my logic.

shalin23 · Answer

The main thing in critical reasoning is that we should NOT get creative with our answer choices!!!

We should not bring any outside knowledge whatsoever. This argument specifically refers to men and women voters. So we must stick to what is relevant to the argument.

Sure some answer choices are tempting, and in the real world would stand right, but if you want an answer to be RIGHT on the GMAT, you should always stick to the most relevant choice for the argument given in the passage. It is the only way.

Hope this helps.

loh · Answer

Can someone elaborate on why option D is wrong?

VerbalBot · Answer

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Political Analyst: Polling suggests that the Labour candidate will win

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