LSAT 146 – Section 2 – Question 20

LSAT 146 - Section 2 - Question 20

June 2016

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Question QuickView	Type	Tags	Answer Choices	Curve	Question Difficulty	Psg/Game/S Difficulty	Explanation
PT146 S2 Q20	+LR +Exp	Flaw or descriptive weakening +Flaw Causal Reasoning +CausR Sampling +Smpl	A 50% 165 B 16% 157 C 5% 157 D 8% 159 E 21% 160	154 162 171	+Hardest	148.55 +SubsectionMedium

Voting records regularly show that people over 65 vote in the highest percentages while young adults are least likely to vote. This indicates that citizens are becoming increasingly disconnected from the political system with each passing generation.

Summarize Argument: Phenomenon-Hypothesis

The author hypothesizes that citizens are becoming increasingly disconnected from politics with each passing generation. This is based on records that show people over 65 vote in the highest percentages, while young adults are the least likely to vote.

Identify and Describe Flaw

The author overlooks the possibility that people become more likely to vote as they get older. In other words, the reason for the disparity in voting rates between old people and young people doesn’t have to be due to a decline in political engagement among more recent generations of people. Each individual generation may be equally likely to vote as other generations when comparing them at similar ages. But likelihood to vote could simply increase with age, for each generation. (A generation is a cohort of people born during a range of particular years.)

compares an early stage of one generation to a later stage of another

The argument compares an early stage of one gen. (the young adults’ generation) to a later stage of another (the older people’s generation). This opens the possibility that the disparity in voting is due to the stage of the gen., not a difference between one gen. and another.

fails to take into account the relative sizes of the generations compared

The sizes of the generations are irrelevant, because the argument concerns explanations for a disparity in the likelihood of voting. People over 65 are more likely to vote than young adults. The comparative number of each group doesn’t affect how we interpret this disparity.

provides evidence for a phenomenon without providing an explanation of the phenomenon

The author does try to provide an explanation of the disparity in voting rates — this is the purpose of the author’s conclusion. (C) therefore doesn’t accurately describe what happens in the argument.

confuses the cause of an effect with the effect itself

(D) describes potential reverse causation. But it doesn’t make sense to think that one’s likelihood to vote or one’s level of political engagement could cause one to age or cause one to be part of a generation.

overlooks the possibility that voting patterns among age groups will change in the future

The author doesn’t overlook this possibility; in fact the author believes that each generation will be more and more politically disconnected. So the author could very well accept that for each age, future people of that age will be less likely to vote.

LSAT 146 – Section 2 – Question 20

LSAT 146 - Section 2 - Question 20

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LSAT PrepTest 146 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Reading Comprehension

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