A recent poll showed that almost half of the city's residents believe that Mayor Walker is guilty of ethics violation...

SamA on October 30, 2019

Hello @Tehran20,

The passage presents us with the following problem:

Mayor Walker was accused of ethics violations, so why do the same amount of people believe him to be a good mayor as before these accusations?

Under what conditions would these accusations have no effect on his approval rating? Our correct answer choice will tell us how this is possible.

Let's look at A. This breaks the city into two groups: those who believe he is guilty, and those who do not. A tells us that the group who believes him to be guilty already thought that his performance was poor. These people already didn't like him, and the accusations are not going to improve their opinion. Think about the second group. They don't believe he is guilty, so these accusations will not affect the number of people who think his performance is good.

In each group, the accusation had no effect, which explains the surprising fact from the premise.

jingjingxiao11111@gmail.com on October 7, 2020

Would it correct to assume that those who thought his performance was poor and that he was guilty amounts to exactly 48% of the total population because 52% of people thought he was good so the remaining population must think he was guilty and bad? Thank you. I just hope my inference is right so I can completely understand this question