Logical Reasoning

PT122 · S1 · Q11 In the recent election, a

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In the recent election, a country’s voters overwhelmingly chose Adler over Burke.

Information

Adler beat Burke in a landslide.

Voters knew that Burke offered better solutions to most of the country's problems and that Burke has a long, reputable track record in government.

pivot (However) It was well known that Burke's environmental policy favored polluters, whereas Adler proposed a strict environmental crackdown.

Evaluate

When the final idea in an Inference paragraph is introduced with some Pivot word, it usually means that the correct answer is what you get by integrating that last idea with what came before.

In this case, the last idea is telling us the one bad thing about Burke so far. We heard Burke badly lost the election despite having better solutions to most problems and having a great track recording in government.

So this negative idea about Burke (his environmental policy favored the most dangerous polluter) would be our only speculation for why Burke lost the election.

Goal

It is speculative, not for sure (but this is Most Supported, not Must Be True), but let's look for something like

11.

Which one of the following is most strongly supported by the information above?

  1. Throughout their respective political careers,

    Out of Scope: throughout their careers

    We can't possibly support any comparison about Adler and Burke that covers both of their respective political careers. We don't know anything about Adler's political career. And we know nothing about Burke's environmental policy positions in the past.

    3% picked this

  2. Voters realized that their country’s

    Too Specific: natural resources depleted

    We could support something more broad like, "Voters were concerned about the health of their environment", since they seem to have voted on that basis. But maybe they're concerned with air pollution, or contaminated water, or global warming. We don't know that they're worried their local resources are being depleted.

    1% picked this

  3. Correct

    The concern of the country’s

    Why this is right

    This aligns with our prediction. It reflects what you get by Reconciling the Pivot idea at the end with what came before. The 2nd and 3rd sentences tell us good things about Burke. Yet we know he lost the election. Why? The last sentence allows us to make a guess that it was based on his environmental policy. Some of us may feel nervous picking a speculative causal explanation like this, but Most Supported is not afraid to go there. There are numerous examples of Most Supported questions whose correct answer are essentially Solving the Causal Mystery. Frequently, it's the idea that "one Difference explains another Difference". For example if we said, "Ben, for the first time on this last practice test, chewed gum while he took it. He got his highest score ever", do we know that chewing gum helped his score? No. But it's supportable that chewing gum helped.

    Skill tested: Most Supported · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    90% picked this

  4. Offering effective strategies for dealing

    Unsupported Comparison

    Burke had both effective strategies and a long record of successful service, and he lost the election. So we have no way of comparing which of those two things is more important in winning an election.

    3% picked this

  5. In every respect other than

    Too Strong: every

    There definitely is support for the idea that in some or maybe even most other respects besides environmental, Burke could have been the better choice. But we can't support the idea that "environmental policy was the one and only area in which Burke was worse than Adler".

    3% picked this

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