PT5.S1.Q21- Major political scandal

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  LSAT Lizard Alum Member

  July 2021 331 karma

  The stimulus is structured:
  1) Major scandal and all parties are equally to blame -> incumbents win regardless of party
  2) Major scandal and one party is to blame -> that party's incumbents likely to lose

  And of five principles that voters might be following, we want to pick the one that best explains why voters respond this way.

  We should note that absolutely nothing in the stimulus suggests that any incumbents themselves are in any way blameful for the scandal. Either all parties are being blamed or one party is being blamed. If Steve the incumbent is a Whig and the Whigs are blameful for a terrible scandal, it's perfectly possible for Steve to not be blameful at all.

  That's why AC A is being thrown out. It's a principle that says what to do when individual incumbents are blameful for a scandal, which has nothing to do with the two phenomena discussed in the stimulus.

  AC B dies to the same problem. It's a principle that says what to believe when incumbents are blamed, again something that just doesn't happen in either stimulus scenario.

  AC C, exact same problem. It's a principle that says what to do when incumbents are being blamed.

  Okay, now it's D and E.

  D doesn't have the same problem. It provides the missing piece that you can reliably blame individual incumbents for pretty much every scandal, and then gives a principle for what to do when incumbents are blamed: decide whether to vote them out based on the quality of their challenger.

  The problem here is that the two situations in the stimulus are just not well explained with this.

  1) In the first situation, the fact that blame for the scandal is being equally assigned to all parties is sufficient to ensure that "virtually all incumbents" win. This is true even if all the challengers are terrible villains, and still true even if all challengers are folk heroes. The quality of the challengers just doesn't matter to the voters' behavior at all. If voters were following the principle from D, then we'd expect the quality of challengers to matter instead.

  2) In the second situation, the fact that blame for the scandal is being assigned to one party is sufficient to ensure that incumbents belonging to that party "are likely to be defeated." Again, this is true all the time, regardless of the quality of challengers. Same problem as the first situation.

  Now we're down to E, the right one. It says that whenever [condition X is met], "whatever party was responsible must be penalized when possible."

  1) In the first situation, all parties are equally blameful, so it isn't possible to penalize whatever party is responsible! Punishing everybody equally means no party gains or loses compared to other parties, which isn't actually a punishment for anyone, so it can't really be done. Since it isn't possible to penalize whatever party is responsible here, the principle of AC E doesn't tell voters to do anything in particular. The voters end up preferring incumbents across the board, but AC E didn't tell them to do that (or to not do that) and we don't really know why it happens (maybe humans just naturally like incumbents).

  2) In the second situation, there is one party that is seen as responsible. AC E demands that voters punish that party. If voters are following AC E, we would expect something bad to happen to that party that doesn't happen to other parties. And indeed, that's what happens- that party's incumbents are likely to lose. Technically the stimulus doesn't say that other parties' incumbents remain unlikely to lose, but it would be pretty strange to specifically mention one party's incumbents suffering when that is equally true of other parties. There's a strong implication that only that one blameful party's incumbents are being punished by being very likely to lose.

  You'll notice that I've completed ignored everything before the comma in AC E, and AC E has already done what it needs to be a good answer. It makes sense that voters following the principle of AC E would treat parties more or less equally in the first scenario, and penalize one party in particular in the second scenario.

  I'd even say that the first clause of AC E, limiting the scope of the principle to only apply under a certain condition, makes AC E a worse answer than it would have been if the first clause was omitted entirely. Now the principle only explains why voters behave this way when the condition is met, and we have no explanation for why voters behave this way when the condition isn't met. That's unfortunate for AC E; it only "account[s] for the contrast" a percentage of the time. But since the other four answers account for the contrast 0% of the time, AC E accounting for the contrast some percent of the time still makes it the best AC available.
• Help2222 Member

  July 2021 240 karma

  I eliminated answer choices A, B, and C. D is a trap answer.
• madman404 Member

  July 2021 21 karma

  @Tennysoj
  This makes perfect sense. Thank you!