In a college election, Tom received 50% of the votes cast, Jim receive

Question

In a college election, Tom received 50% of the votes cast, Jim received 30% of the votes cast, and Joanna received the remaining 20% of the votes cast. Jim was eventually declared the winner of the election for the post of the college President.

Which of the following conclusions can most properly be drawn from the information above?

(A) There were only three candidates who stood for the election.

(B) The college students most likely don’t like Joanna.

(C) Tom must have spent more time campaigning than Jim or Joanna did.

(D) The number of votes received was not a criterion to decide who would be President.

(E) There must be some criterion, other than the number of votes received, that also helps decide who would be President.

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Amityam · Answer

Why E is the correct answer ? The argument doesn't talk about any other method to electing a president. But considering the details we have we can surely infer that number of votes received was not a criterion. So shouldn't D be the correct answer ?

tanniii · Answer

Same question, why is option D not the answer?

ccarson · Answer

If votes received was the only criterion for being elected, why wouldn't Tom have been elected instead? This means that there had to have been some other criterion, hence why it's E. You can argue that maybe there was a recall and people voted again but the question asks what can we conclude based on the  information above .

Why isn't it D? D states that votes received was not a criterion, at all. The first red alarm should be that it's an extreme answer, saying that it can't be true. Looking deeper into it, maybe votes received was a criteria but maybe you only needed to get 30% of the votes (which both Tom and Jim received) or maybe it's a criteria that has a small part in determining who will become president. Therefore, since it's possible that D isn't true, it's incorrect.

I was interested in A so I'll go over why I concluded it's wrong. A is incorrect because, simply, maybe there were 4 candidates but that last one didn't receive any votes.

Bunuel · Answer

Official Explanation

Answer: E

Since this is an Inference question, let’s look at each option and eliminate.

(A) This may not necessarily be the case. There could be a fourth candidate (or even more than four) who did not receive any votes.

(B) There is no way of arriving at this conclusion.

(C) Same as B.

(D) Extreme option. We know that the number of votes received could not have been the only criterion, in which case Tom would have won, but this does not necessarily mean that this was not a criterion at all.

(E) The correct answer.  If Jim won despite not receiving the maximum number of votes, then there has to be some factor other the number of votes received that helps decide who would be President.

In a college election, Tom received 50% of the votes cast, Jim receive

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GMAT Critical Reasoning (CR) Questions

In a college election, Tom received 50% of the votes cast, Jim receive

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