Logical Reasoning

PT155 · S4 · Q15 Candidate: In each election

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Candidate: In each election in the last ten years, the candidate who supported property tax reform received a significant majority of the votes in the northeastern part of my district.

Conclusion

In order to attract additional voters in the northeastern part of my district without alienating other voters, all I need to do is go on record as favoring property tax reform.

Evidence

In each election in the last ten years, the candidate who supported property tax reform got most of the northeastern votes. In no other part of the district is there any discernible relationship between one's position on property tax reform and votes.

Evaluate

There seem to be two potential issues with this argument (both common flaws):

1. the author is assuming from a correlation between "majority votes in NE" and "pro property tax reform" that the latter helped cause the former. It might just be a coincidence that the candidates who won the NE happened to be pro property tax reform. That might have had nothing to do with why they won the NE.

2. the author assuming a similarity between the last ten years and now. Just because something was true in the past (being pro property tax reform helped in the NE and had no effect elsewhere) doesn't mean that connection still holds in this cycle. Maybe it won't be as helpful in the NE anymore / maybe it will be damaging in the other parts of the district. The author is overlooking that things may have changed importantly (maybe the previous candidates actually tackled property tax reform, to the satisfaction of the NE, so now they wouldn't want any further reform).

Goal

Look for an answer calling out the author's Causal Flaw (assuming that because the winning candidate in the NE had a certain position on property tax reform that this position causally influenced their win), or the author's Temporal Flaw (failing to consider that something meaningful may have changed that would alter the pattern of the last ten years).

15.

The reasoning in the candidate's argument is most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that the candidate

  1. would not attempt to enact

    Not an Objection

    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% picked this

  2. draws opposite conclusions about voting

    Not an Objection

    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% picked this

  3. draws a general conclusion about

    Bad Premise Match

    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% picked this

  4. Correct

    surmises from the fact that

    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% picked this

  5. draws a conclusion based solely

    Inaccurate Description

    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% picked this

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