Logical Reasoning

PT146 · S2 · Q20 Voting records regularly show

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Voting records regularly show that people over 65 vote in the highest percentages while young adults are least likely to vote.

Conclusion (this indicates that)

Citizens are becoming increasingly disconnected from the political system with each passing generation.

Evidence

People over 65 vote in the highest percentages while young adults are least likely to vote.

Evaluate

The author's evidence presents a Curious Comparison -- why is it that people over 65 have the highest percentage of voting whereas young adults have the lowest percentage of voting?

His conclusion assumes one possible Causal Explanation -- each new generation is less connected to the political system, so they don't feel as strong an urge to vote.

We always react to this Curious Fact / Explanation type of argument with the same two pressure points: - Alternative Explanations for the curious fact (how else could we explain why higher percentages of older people than younger people vote?)

- Plausibility of the Author's Explanation (do we have any other evidence that today's generation is less connected to the political system than previous generations were?)

When we see Curious Fact / Explanation arguments on Flaw, the correct answer is almost always about Alternate Explanations.

A different way to explain the voting difference between old and young might just be that the old people are retired and can watch cable news all day and have no problem voting on random Tuesdays, whereas young people are busy and have to go to work or have enough of a social life that they don't pay any attention to politics.

The conclusion isn't saying . It's saying,

Goal

Look for an answer complaining that the author failed to consider some alternate explanation for the difference in voting habits.

20.

The argument's reasoning is questionable in that the argument

Correct
compares an early stage of
Why this is right
An alternate explanation for the schism in voting behavior is simply that people get more politically active as they get older. It's not a generational thing; it's just an aging thing. Maybe 80% of Baby Boomers vote, while only 30% of Gen Z votes, but if you were to rewind the clock 50 years, when the Baby Boomers were in their early 20s, you'd find that only 30% of Baby Boomers voted back when they were in their early 20s. This answer choice is tiptoeing around that objection. It's saying, "It's not fair for you to compare how the Boomers vote in their 70s to how Gen Z votes in their 20s. If you're trying to compare the political engagement of one generation vs. that of another, you need to make a fairer comparison: what % of Boomers voted when they were in their 20s vs. what % of Gen Z votes right now in their 20s." Otherwise, it's hard to tell whether the difference in voting is because different generations had different political values or just because as we get older we're more likely to have the time and interest to vote.
Skill tested: Flaw · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
53% picked this
fails to take into account
% vs. #
The relative size of the generations is irrelevant. It doesn't make a difference which generation is more populous, because we're only talking about the percentage of people from each generation who vote.
16% picked this
provides evidence for a phenomenon
Not a Flaw
It's not objectionable to provide evidence for a phenomenon without providing an explanation of the phenomenon. I might present evidence that "my mom really loves Justin Bieber" by pointing out she has all his albums, and has been to his concerts, and has an ankle tattoo that says Belieber. With this evidence, I have built a strong case that my mom loves Justin Bieber. For me to be right, I don't need to also explain why she likes him.
4% picked this
confuses the cause of an
Not an Objection Always Wrong
There is a correlation in the evidence between being in an older generation and voting more. The author concludes that being in this older generation causes its members to vote more. This answer choice is saying the author failed to consider that "voting more is actually causing them to be in this generation". That's nonsensical, of course. SIDE NOTE: When authors present a correlation between X and Y and conclude that X causes Y, we want to raise the possibility that Y might cause X. But we can never say with surety that Y causes X. So whenever we see a Flaw answer choice saying, with certainty, that "the author confused cause and effect" it's wrong. If they say it's possible the author confused cause and effect, it could still be correct.
7% picked this
overlooks the possibility that voting
Not an Objection
Does it weaken the argument to say, "Hey, author, voting patterns among age groups will change in the future"? Nope, because the author has already committed himself to that very idea. He thinks that each passing generation is increasingly disconnected (and thus will vote in lower percentages). So when Gen Z reaches their 30s, and now the Remote Learning generation is in their 20s, this author expects people in the age group of 20-29 to vote at lower rates than they did when Gen Z was filling up the 20-29 age group. Our objection was "what if voting habits change as you age", not "what if voting patterns for a given age group change in the future".
19% picked this

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