Traditionally, candidates for elected offices - CR Inference

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Traditionally, candidates for elected offices have concentrated their efforts on the early stages of the campaign during which, most people believed, the voters' perceptions of candidates were formed. It is now becoming clear, however, that elections can be decided in the few days preceding election day; public opinion polls taken during recent elections provide evidence of several such races. In those cases, the losing candidates would have been well advised to have forgone early spending and instead saved funds for television advertisements late in their campaigns.

Which of the following inferences can be most reasonably drawn from the information in the passage above?

A) Television has had an adverse effect on political campaigns, making them less issue-oriented.
B) Politicians of the pre-television era fail to understand the important role television advertising plays in today's political campaigns.
C) Public opinion polls often inaccurately reflect the mood of the electorate in the early stages of a political campaign.
D) Polls taken in the days preceding a major election may not accurately predict the outcome of an election.
E) Candidates should not try to define the key issues of a race until late in the campaign.

OA: D

I eliminated all the options which was strange because I could not infer any of the above from the argument. In fact, option D seems the opposite of what is stated in the argument. What is stated in the argument is :
that elections can be decided in the few days preceding election day; public opinion polls taken during recent elections provide evidence of several such races
So, how is option D correct ?

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by David@GMATPrepNow » Fri Aug 22, 2014 8:14 am
Hi parul1591,

In real life we are used to reading or hearing news stories in which election poll results are reported. The fact that it is news stories that carry poll results information has conditioned us to believe that the poll results are correct, true, verifiable, trustworthy, and ACCURATE.

Here is the most important point in dissecting this critical reasoning question: poll results are NOT necessarily any of those things, especially accurate. Keeping this point in mind, it is a little easier to see that answer D is a reasonable inference from the passage: public opinion polls taken during recent elections provide evidence of several such races.

Evidence of what? Well, in the first part of the passage, we learn that surprise changes take place in elections ("elections can be decided in the few days preceding the election"). If the result of an election is a surprise (an unexpected outcome), we should ask why we had a certain expectation. We had a certain expectation because of poll results. Poll results which were inaccurate.

Answer D says the following:

Polls taken in the days preceding a major election may not accurately predict the outcome of an election.

This answer can certainly be inferred from the passage.