recent poll

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akhpad: Legendary Member; Posts: 809; Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2010 10:10 pmFollowed by: 4 members; Thanked: 50 times

by akhpad » Sat May 15, 2010 9:25 am

Source: Manhattan GMAT CR Guide 4th Ed

In a recent poll, 71% of respondents reported that they cast votes in the most recent national election. Voting records show, however, that only 60% of eligible voters actually voted in that election.

Which of the following pieces of evidence, if true, would provide the best explanation for the discrepancy?

A: The margin of error for the survey was plus or minus five percentage pints. => INCORRECT
B: Fifteen percent of the survey's respondents were living overseas at the time of election. => INCORRECT
C: Prior research has shown that people who actually do vote are also more likely to respond to polls than those who do not vote.
D: Some people who intended to vote are presented from doing so by last minute conflicts on election day or other complications.
E: Polls about voting behavior typically have margins of error within plus or minus three percentage points. => INCORRECT

OA: C

What about C and D?

Source: Beat The GMAT — Critical Reasoning | Sat May 15, 2010 9:25 am

mrinal2100: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 60; Joined: Wed Jun 25, 2008 9:33 pm; Thanked: 1 times

by mrinal2100 » Sat May 15, 2010 12:05 pm

60% of the eligible voters means voters who actually cast their vote,while 71% respondents can be people who were eligible to vote or people who were not eligible to vote.

paes: Legendary Member; Posts: 995; Joined: Tue Apr 13, 2010 11:56 pmFollowed by: 1 member; Thanked: 31 times

by paes » Sun May 16, 2010 10:14 pm

C is straight away answer.

D is a behavior that people generally so.
But here both the events are already happened so the behavior doesn't matter.

Just be careful :

CAST : past event

s9q78g: Junior | Next Rank: 30 Posts; Posts: 11; Joined: Fri Apr 02, 2010 7:35 am

by s9q78g » Sat Sep 18, 2010 1:24 am

Let me break this up....
suppose in a area 1000 ppl lived who were eligible to vote....
poll result shows 60% success... which means 600 ppl actually voted....

Now, the survey result-
71% said 'yes'.... the survey may have covered only 500 ppl or lets say the survey was responded by only 500 ppl who were excited about the election, though some of them would not have been able to vote...rest 500(including some of the ppl who actually voted) did not bother to answer the survey....

out of the 500 survey respondents, the number of ppl actually voted would be 355, rest would not have voted or were not eligible to vote...The agency which conducted the survey speculated and presented to the public that 71% voting has been done...

Hence, choice C fits the best...

debmalya_dutta: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 385; Joined: Sun Jul 12, 2009 10:16 pmFollowed by: 2 members; Thanked: 29 times; GMAT Score:710

by debmalya_dutta » Sat Sep 18, 2010 8:25 am

Agree with Paes here

D: Some people who intended to vote are presented from doing so by last minute conflicts on election day or other complications. ... So , if 10 people decided to vote ... 5 people actually voted and 4 people responded to the survey.. Here we are not talking about the 10 people .... The are talking about the 2 groups colored in red... Example - So 5/10 = 50% and 4/5 = 80%.... Similar percentages have been furnished in the question stem

@Deb

trangle.nh: Junior | Next Rank: 30 Posts; Posts: 16; Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2011 6:46 am

by trangle.nh » Thu Jun 30, 2011 8:19 pm

1. The survey happened after the vote. So no need to care for reason why people could not vote.

2. This is percentage problem:
71% of respondents (70% of X)
60% of actual vote (60% of Y) is eligible
Since X&Y is basically different from each other, no comparison should be made here
why these 2 numbers are different?

Answer C: In total number of respondents: actual voters are more likely to participate in survey --> percentage of actual voters is higher than those not voting ---> that's why it is 71%

Only Answer C helps to clarify why the 71% percentage is so high and this is not correlated with the 60%.
3. Other answers address out of scope explanation
4. C is best among these

Sanjay2706: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 116; Joined: Tue May 31, 2011 7:52 pmFollowed by: 2 members; Location: Bangalore, India; Thanked: 2 times

by Sanjay2706 » Thu Jun 30, 2011 10:37 pm

IMO C.
As it shows that there might be discrepancy in both the values.

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