Candidate: In each election

Answer choices

1. A

   Not an Objection1% picked this

   would not attempt to enact property tax reform

   This author's conclusion is just about the election (attracting voters in the NE and not alienating them elsewhere). If the author disingenuously pretends to support property tax reform (she doesn't plan to actually do anything about it, once in office) but it still fools voters into liking her, then her conclusion is still correct.

   1%
2. B

   Not an Objection5% picked this

   draws opposite conclusions about voting patterns in different parts of

   Yes the author does conclude different voting patterns about different parts of the district, but that's because the underlying evidence shows a difference. Our complaint isn't that the author is concluding a difference (since that matches her evidence). Our complaint is that our author is too sure about the difference (because past might not equal present, and because the correlation might not have represented causation).

   5%
3. C

   Bad Premise Match11% picked this

   draws a general conclusion about patterns of voting based on a

   There's no move from a small sample of voters to a general conclusion about voters. There is evidence about the general voting of people in previous elections, and a conclusion about the general voting of people in this upcoming election.

   11%
4. D

   Correct81% picked this

   surmises from the fact that two phenomena are correlated that one

   Why this is right

   Whoa, "surmises"? That's a new one. Welcome to Test 89, everyone. Surmises = takes for granted = presumes = assumes. Did the author assume from a correlation that one factor caused another? Yes, the author assumes that because there was an association between winning the majority of NE voters and being a candidate who favors property tax reform, that "being a candidate who favors property tax reform caused these candidates to win a majority of NE voters". This is the famous Causal flaw.

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

   81%
5. E

   Inaccurate Description3% picked this

   draws a conclusion based solely on data that are ten

   Is it true that "the only" data is ten years old? No. First of all, it's not inherently a flaw to rely solely on data that's ten years old. You might be flawed by overconfidently assuming that it's still relevant today, but you could responsibly/correctly conclude something that accounted for that possibility. "Therefore, assuming this data represents the current situation, all I need to do is go on record .... " Secondly, the data concerns "each election" in the last ten years, so presumably they have elections more frequently than once every 10 years, and thus some of these elections were more recent than ten years ago.

   3%