Q5 - In a poll of eligible voters

[r1r200]

Can you please explain why its a and not d? thanks.

[giladedelman]

Thanks for the question!

Here we're presented with a discrepancy: on the one hand, more poll respondents favored Panitch than favored any other candidate; yet somehow, Yeung defeated Panitch comfortably.

What could explain this result? Well, maybe there was a problem with the poll methodology. Or maybe a lot of people who said they supported candidates other than Panitch or Yeung decided to vote for Yeung. Or maybe Yeung supporters were more likely to vote than Panitch supporters.

Remember, we're going to find four incorrect answers that DO resolve the discrepancy, and one correct answer that DOESN'T resolve it -- that either is irrelevant or makes it harder to resolve.

(A), the correct answer, falls into the latter category. If a smaller percentage of Yeung's supporters were eligible to vote, this would help explain the poll results (in which fewer eligible voters said they supported Yeung than Panitch), but would make it less likely, if anything, for Yeung to win the election.

(B) helps resolve the discrepancy because Mulhern's supporters may have switched their allegiance to Yeung after Mulhern withdrew.

(C) helps resolve it by casting doubt on the poll itself; if it was designed by members of Panitch's staff, perhaps its results were not truly indicative of voter sentiment.

(D) helps resolve the discrepancy by suggesting that Yeung's supporters were more likely to vote than Panitch's.

(E) also casts doubt on the poll results by accusing it of sample bias. Maybe more people overall planned to vote for Yeung.

Does that answer your question? Let me know if you're still hung up on this one.

[Shiggins]

I see how A is the correct answer, but for B to be wrong you say that his dropout may sway voters. Isn't that an assumption, that his dropout has bearing on voters switching. What if that assumption was false and had no effect on voter sway. Thats why I was stuck between A and B. If you can explain thank you.

[giladedelman]

You're absolutely right that's it's possible that this third candidate's dropping out didn't lead to Yeung's victory. But remember that we're just looking to eliminate those answers that contribute to a resolution of the discrepancy. This answer contributes to one possible resolution by setting up a circumstance under which voters might have switched from one candidate to another. (A), on the other hand, doesn't contribute at all, whatsoever; in fact, it makes it harder to resolve the discrepancy. So between an answer that helps but isn't perfect, and an answer that hurts, pick the imperfect but helpful answer.

Does that help?

[Shiggins]

Your explanation did help, thank you, I appreciate your reply.

[mcrittell]

Does D still resolve the discrepancy because although Yeung's supporters were more likely to support Pantich in the polls, they eventually supported Yeung in the actual election?

[timmydoeslsat]

Does D still resolve the discrepancy because although Yeung's supporters were more likely to support Pantich in the polls, they eventually supported Yeung in the actual election?

What choice D is saying is that while it may have been true that Panitch had more people that were POLLED that said they favored them, they simply did not have the fire in the belly to go make the effort to vote.

Yeung supporters may have been outnumbered overall, as possibly indicated in the poll (which we do not even know is a representative poll, which E helps address), however, although they were outnumbered overall, those supporters were more likely to actually go out and vote.

Think of it with the Ron Paul craze in politics that past couple of years.

He has a rabid fan base in which he always seems to win online polls and straw polls.

Ron Paul supporters are no doubt outnumbered in the country. However, when push comes to shove in these smaller events, Ron Paul supporters have that fire in the belly to do a certain action, while other people may be busy doing other things and do not care about online polls.

[muriella]

I answered this q in one of the lesson review sessions with Kim C. but didn't hear this explanation so just wanted to run it by the board...

I picked A but for an additional reason - because it seemed like it did not actually apply to the situation in the stimulus, which only dealt with polling among eligible voters of both panich and yeung.. Therefore, it didn't matter if a smaller percentage of Yeung's supporters were eligible, since the polling was conducted only among eligible voters of both Panich an Yeung.

Was i reading too much into it???

Thanks in advance.

[ohthatpatrick]

I think you're point is valid.

Had the stimulus just said "in a poll, more ppl said they supported P than Y", and yet Y won the election, it would have been a very LSAT-like idea to resolve that paradox by saying the opposite of (A), that a smaller percentage of P's supporters were eligible to vote.

We'd think, "Oh, THAT'S how P could have had more supporters but fewer votes."

But, as you said, the survey is only of eligible voters, so (A)'s distinction between % of supporters who were eligible vs. ineligible is really out of scope and meaningless to the data we were given.

Nice catch.

[anthonyagostino]

Very distracting to do the EXCEPT type questions, and again, a lot of emphasis on the word CONTRIBUTES. As I have posted in other answers, think of spotting in the gym.
Someone lifts 200+ lbs and you SPOT them with 2 fingers.... and the weight moves. Though TINY...your CONTRIBUTION is still valid. They never quantify the magnitude or quality of the contribution. Just that it can contribute. If it contributes in any way....IT'S OUT.

A- Originally distracting...but let's draw a picture. Here they changed the point of reference from ABSOLUTE number of votes or POLLS, and is converted to PERCENTAGES. Yeung won....soooooo if he had a smaller PERCENTAGE of ELIGIBLE voters than Panitch....what does that prove? Let's do it visually
(++++++++++++++/***) Pan.... += Eligible *= Ineligible. Safe to say a BIG majority or PERCENTAGE are eligible.
(++++++++++++++++++++/****************************************************************************************************) Yeung.

Yeung does in DEED have a smaller PERCENTAGE of ELIGABLE voters, but his ABSOLUTE number or relative number are GREATER than Pans. SUre a smaller percentage but his ELIGIBLE voters completely outnumber ALL of Pans voters. So what does having a smaller PERCENTAGE MEAN? ....nothing. Furthermore nothing mentions anything about eligible versus actually voting. Sure KAEPERNICK was ELIGIBLE to vote...but we all know how that turned out.

This one actually backfires and qualifies on another front as well. If they lead you to believe that Yeung had fewer voters, which is what they want you to possibly believe....how did he win? How did fewer eligible voters somehow pull off an upset...to be honest, if their NUMBER of SUPPORTERS was equal, having FEWER eligible VOTING supporters would not be an explanation FOR why you won but rather an OBSTACLE you overcame TO WIN.

Thus...In NO way...and no POSSIBLE way can this explain in any fashion how Yeung won. They actually add insult to Panitch's injury. If losing wasn't enough, you lost to a smaller crowd...which means.... though they....Like our recent elections....May have PUBLICLY supported one candidate...when the curtain closed..... It all turned out different. Sure they POLLED great....but Panitch's vocal supporters abandoned ship in the booth. After all...a smaller percentage of Yeung's supporters where able to vote..... Where did his remaining voters come from....the Treasonous Panitch crew!!!!. (or that mysterious... undecided third party....?????)

Now if they had said that Panitchs crew turned on him.... sure that would be a contributing factor...but they never bring that up....so we cannot assume it.

[JamieY105]

Doesn’t the question explicitly state that the poll was taken only from eligible voters. As such A is still the correct answer being as it does not explain anything. It’s more or less a useless statement.

[NitanS934]

I see how A is the correct answer, but for B to be wrong you say that his dropout may sway voters. Isn't that an assumption, that his dropout has bearing on voters switching. What if that assumption was false and had no effect on voter sway. Thats why I was stuck between A and B. If you can explain thank you.

I would argue that all four incorrect answer choices present at least one assumption. For all of them to be incorrect, they have to contribute to the discrepancy (Yeung winning despite the polls showing that Panitch was favored to win over any other candidate - with Yeung being one of the other candidates).

B) For this to be incorrect, we have to assume that enough of Mulhern's supporters voted for Yeung so as to enable Yeung to triumph over Panitch.

C) For this to be incorrect, we have to assume that Panitch's staff members wrote the survey with a bias towards Panitch.

D) For this to be incorrect, we have to assume the following:
- That those that view the election as "important" or "very important" are more likely to vote than those who do not view the election as important.
- LSAC loves to test our understanding of percentages vs numbers. What if Yeung had 10 supporters while Panitch had 30? Well in that example, 70% of Yeung's supporters (or 7 people) and 30% of Panitch's supporters (or 9 people) view the election as "important" or "very important." In this hypothetical, more of Panitch's supporters view the election as important/very important than do Yeung's supporters. So a second assumption we have to make for answer choice D to be incorrect is that the total number of supporters for each don't lead to a similar scenario I presented here.

E) For this to be incorrect, we have to assume the following:
- That people are working on Monday. What if it's a holiday? What if this town has a Tuesday to Saturday schedule?
- That enough people polled were workers/working that day... what if all of the people polled are non-workers?)
- Again this answer choice uses the word "percentage." Not only do we not know the total number of supporters for each candidate, but we also don't know what the percentage for each looks like. We can play with the numbers in a lot of ways here to ultimately make this answer choice not make it contribute to the discrepancy as I've done above for D

The key here is that we're looking for what contributes to a resolution. Contribute is weak. It doesn't mean cause. It just means that it can/may lead to something. All of the incorrect answer choices, may lead to the resolution if we make different assumptions. I almost view this as a "strengthen/weaken" question where all of the incorrect answer choices strengthen the scenario (if we make different assumptions) while the correct answer choice either weakens the scenario or is irrelevant.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The fun thing about this stimulus is that it was written in such a vague way so as to allow for a plethora of reasons as to why Yeung ultimately won even beyond the ones mentioned as answer choices. Here are a few additional ones I can think of (all of which require their own assumptions):

- What if this town had rank-choice voting? Perhaps Panitch had the most first-choice support but not enough to reach 50% + 1 and Yeung had the most support if you include first-choice, second-choice, etc

- What if most of Yeung's supporters refuse to answer polls - well again, if you play with the numbers here, perhaps it could lead to the scenario we saw

- What if the sample size of the poll was too small so as to be representative of the outcome? Perhaps they oversampled Panitch supporters and under-sampled Yeung supporters to a large enough extent so as to lead to this outcome

- What if something happened in the news after the poll was taken (i.e. during the morning of the election) that make a lot of Panitch supporters change their minds? - perhaps enough switched over to Yeung or switched over to another candidate and lowering Panitch's vote total enough to tip the scale over to Yeung

- Maybe social desirability bias was at play and people polled said they prefer Panitch because this is what they thought is more socially desirable/correct, but in reality enough of these people actually voted for Yeung so as to lead to the result we noticed

And I bet we could go on and on!