PT70.S4.Q19-- viewers surveyed immediately after the televised debate

Darklord

Hi,

I think this question is infamously hard... can anyone explain why the answer is D and not C? Both C and D looked incredibly attractive

P.S. I have read a lot of explanations for this question, and the top 2 I have seen (but don't feel fully address why D is right and C is wrong) are:

explanation #1-- D is the only correctly qualified answer choice: D is the only one that talks about "viewers" and all the other answer choices talk about other groups of people that may not include the surveyed viewers.

My problem with explanation #1: D talks about "viewers surveyed immediately prior to the debate", while the stimulus talks about "viewers surveyed immediately after the debate". These 2 groups may or may not intersect. In addition C talks people who people who watched the televised debate, which also may or may not intersect with the "viewers surveyed immediately after the debate" described in the stimulus. Thus, both C and D may or may not qualified correctly.

explanation #2-- it is totally possible for us to take the information in C and not weaken the stimulus at all. After all, let's say that the people who watched the debate were 5% more likely to vote for Tanner than those who did not watch. It is still possible for the viewers surveyed among the people who watched the debate to be biased for Lopez.

My problem with explanation #2: a flaw also exist with D-- that the viewers surveyed immediately prior to the debate are not the same people surveyed after the debate. This could mean that D could be true without weakening the argument too. In this respect, I feel like it is still quite difficult to balance between the 2 answer choices when both seem flawed, and it is hard to tell which one is less flawed.

Thanks!

Best regards

jugolo96

The key here is a trap that the LSAT enjoys regarding comparisons.

A, B and E are easy to eliminate and it is tempting to eliminate D as they have drawn you to the trap by using the temporal comparison (before versus after the debate). However, C is wrong because the answer does NOT include anything about the people who liked Lopez. The comparison that is important for the conclusion is between Lopez and Tanner fans. C only said:

"The people who watched the televised debate were more likely to vote for Tanner than were the people who did not watch the debate."

This just compares likelihood to vote for Tanner in two populations. It does NOT relate it to Lopez. Being more likely to vote for tanner than other people does not mean you are more likely to vote for Lopez (the first group could be 2% for Tanner and the second group 3%, both groups still being biased in favor of Lopez)

This is hard I believe because D never specifies that the people in the two surveys are the same or that they both are representative samples, leaving a shed of doubt. However, C is definitely wrong.

Darklord

Wow, thank you @jugolo96! This really helped!