#22 - In a poll conducted by interviewing eligible voters in

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Resolve the Paradox. The correct answer choice is (E)

The paradox here is the discrepancy between a pre-election poll’s prediction of an incumbent win, and the actual results of the election. Although the poll showed incumbent candidate Kenner as significantly ahead of Muratori, Kenner lost.

The question asks for an answer choice which helps to explain this inconsistency, so we should look for an answer choice which is consistent with both a Keller loss and the poll’s prediction otherwise.

Answer choice (A): The disparity between the political stands of the two candidates is irrelevant to an explanation of the mistaken poll, so this answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (B): Keller’s previous record has no bearing on the question of why the poll predictions were proven wrong by the outcome of the election. This answer merely clouds the issue, and certainly does not resolve the discrepancy presented in the stimulus, so this choice cannot be correct.

Answer choice (C): This answer choice only explains one side of the paradox, so it is incorrect; a number of scandals would explain why Kenner lost the election, but would not explain why the polls would predict a Kenner win.

Answer choice (D): This answer choice might have an effect on both the poll and the actual outcome, but would not help to explain the reason for the poll’s predicting a Kenner win and the election producing a Muratori win.

Answer choice (E): This is the correct answer choice. This choice would help to explain why a minority of poll responses would still allow for a majority win for Muratori. If the Muratori supporters were more likely to consider the election important, they were probably more likely to go vote, whereas the Keller supporters were relatively more likely to be apathetic, since less of them described the election as important.

[kyunglt]

Hi. I had a problem with question 7. of Lesson 11, Resolve the Paradox. The answer was E, explaining that it was correct, in that because more people felt that the election was important, more people were inclined to vote. Therefore, Muratori won the election. Couldn't answer D. be the same case? If more younger people were added to the number of registered voters right before the election, but they weren't polled, couldn't that explain the discrepancy between the poll and the outcome of the election. Couldn't the young people have been the ones to sway the election's outcome? In both answer choices, we have to assume that both those who described the election as important and those new, younger voters, actually voted. So how is one more correct than the other?

[Stephanie Oswalt]

Hi kyunglt,

Thanks for the question! I have moved your question to the thread explaining this topic. Does the above explanation help? Please let us know if you have any additional questions after reviewing the above explanation, and we would be happy to help.

Thanks!

[JocelynL]

Hello,

I fail to see how answer choice E explains the part of the stimulus that states "Kenner was significantly ahead of Muratori in the polls."

For answer choice E, in the poll, if the supporters of Muratori were more likely to describe the election as important it doesn't really tell us anything because we don't know how many supporters there were present. There could be a few or there could be a lot. How could that tell us anything about who was ahead or not ?

I really didn't see how any answer choice explain the paradox in this one. Please help with my reasoning!

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Jocelyn,

To resolve the paradox, we need something to distinguish the poll responses from the election. People when polled were more likely to pick Kenner, but Muratori won the election. If it's true that Muratori supporters were more likely to think the election was important, that would explain the discrepancy. You could have more Kenner supporters, but fewer that take the time to show up and vote. We don't really need to know here how many supporters are at issue---in Resolve the Paradox questions, we are told to assume the answer choices are true. If Muratori supporters are more likely than the others to say the election is important, no matter how many of them there are, it would give a reason that those voters were more likely to vote than others.

Hope that helps!

[AspenHerman]

Hi!!

In Lesson Ten in the course, during class, my instructor said that this question had an example of an answer choice that highlighted the similarities/differences category type of wrong answer. Would D be that type of wrong answer? If not, can you point me to that wrong answer? I would like to know what that similarity/difference wrong category looks like.


For my reference: Question 7, page 10-11 in course book.

[Robert Carroll]

Aspen,

Hi! Answer choice (D) was the answer I was thinking of. The change in voting age should apparently hit both candidates equally, so it can't explain the difference.

Robert Carroll

[AspenHerman]

Aspen,

Hi! Answer choice (D) was the answer I was thinking of. The change in voting age should apparently hit both candidates equally, so it can't explain the difference.

Robert Carroll

Hi! Thank you for responding, I was hoping that you would see this.

Anyhow, this is an interesting example, because, in our "currently political climate", lowering voting age will usually helps one person in particular.... Anyhow, do you think because it says "just before the recent election" in the stimulus and it says "six months before" in answer D, that the six months would be seen as before "recent" so those new voters could have been interviewed? So in this case, the discrepancy is a difference, but lower the voting age is a similarity?

[Adam Tyson]

I think it's fair to say that "just before" is much more recent than six months, AspenHerman, even if it is a bit subjective. And while a lower voting age might favor one candidate more than another, we have no way of knowing which candidate that would be in this case, so this kind of thing could either resolve the paradox or make it worse, or could do nothing at all. Without more information about how younger voters feel about the two candidates, this answer, even if it had been one week before the election, would still have to leave us scratching our heads and wondering what impact it would have.

I think this answer would only work if the voting age was lowered AFTER the poll was completed, in which case the poll would not have been a representative sample of eligible voters, which could contribute to an explanation of the difference between the poll results and the voting results.

[moshearking]

I understand how answer choice E resolves the paradox in the way you explained it. But a golden rule in paradox questions is to never add to an answer choice. Saying that Muratori voters are more likely to go out and vote than Kenner voters is a huge assumption without anything in the passage backing it up.