Logical Reasoning

PT123 · S2 · Q19 Historian: The Land Party achieved

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Historian: The Land Party achieved its only national victory in Banestria in 1935.

Conclusion (I conclude)

The success of the Land Party that year was due to the combination of the Land Party’s specifically addressing the concerns of agricultural and small business interests and the depth of the economic problems people in these groups were facing.

Evidence

The Land Party achieved its only national victory in Banestria in 1935.

It received most of its support that year in rural and semirural areas, where the bulk of Banestria’s population lived at the time.

The economic woes of the years surrounding that election hit agricultural and small business interests the hardest, and the Land Party specifically targeted those groups in 1935.

Evaluate

Since the Land Party's victory in 1935 was it's only national victory, it would qualify as an anomaly / a Curious Fact. And since the conclusion is causal, "X was due to Y and Z", we can definitely use our Explain Curious Fact framework.

Curious Fact: why did the Land Party win in 1935?

Author's Explanation: agricultural and small business interests were really economically struggling in those years, and the Land Party specifically addressed the concerns of those groups.

Goal

The two pressure points are 1. Alternate Explanations for the curious fact 2. the plausibility of the Author's Explanation

We can strengthen by ruling out an alternate explanation for the Land Party’s success or strengthen by making the author's explanation seem more plausible.

19.

Each of the following, if true, strengthens the historian's argument EXCEPT:

  1. Correct

    In preceding elections the Land

    Why this is right

    We don't really care what happened in preceding elections. If we were told that the Land Party made no attempt to address the interests of urban groups in this election, then we might consider that Ruling Out the Alternate Explanation that they won in 1935 not because they appealed to rural / semirural voters but because they appealed to urban voters. But this isn't giving us any information about the 1935 election.

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

    59% picked this

  2. Voters are more likely to

    Strengthens

    This boosts the plausibility of the Author's Explanation by connecting "addressing certain groups' concerns" with "winning an election".

    3% picked this

  3. The Land Party had most

    Strengthens

    This boosts the plausibility of the Author's Explanation that the Land Party's success in 1935 was due in part to the economic distress of people in the agricultural sector, by providing more data points that show "When Cause was Present, Effect was Present". Most of the time the Land Party wins, the agricultural sector is in economic distress, so it strengthens the idea that those two things are causally connected (correlations lend plausibility to a causal connection; they just don't outright prove one).

    13% picked this

  4. No other major party in

    Strengthens

    This strengthens the correlation between addressing the issues of people who lived in semirural areas and winning the election. It adds plausibility in the most typical way on Strengthen: No Cause, No Effect. The other major parties didn't address the issues of the semirural people, and they didn't win the election. Or said a different way, if the other major parties were ALSO addressing the issues of semirural people, then it wouldn't make sense to point to that as the causal difference-maker for why the Land Party won the election.

    10% picked this

  5. The greater the degree of

    Strengthens

    This boosts the plausibility of the author's explanation by making it seem like these rural and semirural people actually voted. We know they were economically hurting, and we know that the Land Party specifically addressed their concerns, but if those people don't show up to vote (if most votes come from urban voters) then the author's explanation wouldn't make sense. This answer helps to affirm that most votes came from people in the rural / semirural areas. The bulk of the population lived there at the time, and they would have been the people most likely to vote, given their economic distress.

    16% picked this

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