Consultant: Support If Whalley sticks with her current platform in the upcoming election, then she will lose to her opponent by a few percentage points among voters under 50, while beating him by a bigger percentage among voters 50 and over. Therefore, Conclusion sticking with her current platform will allow her to win the election.
The author concludes that if Whalley sticks with her current platform, she can win the election. Why? Because although sticking with her current platform will lead to her losing to her opponent by a few percentage points among voters under 50, it will also lead to her beating her opponent by a bigger percentage among older voters.
By sticking to her current platform, she’ll win older voters by a larger percentage than she will lose younger voters. But does that guarantee that she can win? No, since we don’t know the comparative number of voters that she’ll win/lose compared to her opponent in each age category. What if the number of over 50 people is much smaller than the number of younger people? In that case, Whalley might not win with her current platform.
To make the argument valid, we want to know that the number of voters Whalley will win among the older voters is higher than the number of voters Whalley will lose among the younger voters by sticking with the current platform.
The consultant’s conclusion follows logically if which one of the following is assumed?
There is no change Whalley could make to her platform that would win over more voters under 50 than it would lose voters 50 and over.
(A) establishes that Whalley doesn’t have a better alternative compared to her current platform for winning older voters. But this doesn’t establish that her current platform will allow her to get more votes than her opponent.
The issues that most concern voters under 50 are different from those that most concern voters 50 and over.
(B) doesn’t establish that her current platform will allow her to get more votes than her opponent.
If Whalley changes her platform, her opponent will not change his platform in response.
The argument concerns what her current platform allows. What happens if Whalley changes her platform doesn’t establish what happens if she keeps her current platform.
There will be more voters in the election who are 50 and over than there will be voters under 50.
If the older group has more people than the younger group, then that means the number of voters Whalley will gain by winning the older group will exceed the number of voters she’ll lose among the younger group.
Whalley would change her platform if she thought it would give her a better chance to win.
The argument concerns what her current platform allows. Whether Whalley would change her platform has nothing to do with what her current platform allows.
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