Q2 - Syndicated political columnists

[jewels0602]

Very surprised this one hasn't been posted yet; I thought it was REALLY tough for the second question.

I was able to eliminate B-D on the first round, but was left with A and E, tugging me equally.

I definitely see how E is the answer, but I'm having trouble eliminating A... or at least, make it little less appealing so it's not as strong a contender.


Any help will be very appreciated. I ended up picking E because it had persuasion in the answer choice and thought it matched up the argument better.

[ohthatpatrick]

To get right to the point, (A) weakens the argument.

The author is arguing that syndicated political columnists (SPC’s) rarely persuade readers how to vote a certain way.

(A) says that SPC’s usually persuade undecided voters how to vote.

That would hurt the author’s conclusion. You’re getting confused because the premise emphasizes “decided” voters, so I think your brain is thinking, “Did we fail to consider UNDECIDED voters?”

Make sure you’re comfortable using the Negation Test when you’re down to 2 on Necessary Assumption (or just make sure you clear on the conclusion — we can tell that (A) weakens simply by comparing it to the conclusion). The correct answer, when negated, would weaken the argument. (A) weakens the argument as is.

== complete explanation ===

Question Type: Necessary Assumption

Task: Which answer, if false, would hurt the argument?

Tendencies: The correct answer to Necessary Assumption either
provides a missing link
or
rules out a potential objeciton

Argument Core:
Conc - SPC’s rarely convince readers how to vote
(why?)
Prem - most readers will have already made a decision about whom to vote for.

We could predict a Missing Link answer that would sound something like “IF Prem, THEN Conc”
“If most voters have already made a decision about whom to vote for, then SPC’s will rarely convince their readers how to vote.”

To think of Potential Objections, think about how you would accept the Premise but still argue for the opposite of the conclusion: “Given that most voters will have already made a decision about whom they’re voting for, how can I argue that SPC’s frequently DO persuade readers how to vote?”

There are really two main avenues to make that objection:
1. What if most readers are UNDECIDED voters? (We know most voters are decided, but maybe most readers are undecided)

2. What if a reader who is DECIDED gets convinced to switch his vote to another candidate based on reading the SPC’s column?

=== answer choices ====

(A) This hurts the author’s argument, so he wouldn’t have to assume it.

(B) This goes beyond what the author is arguing. The author is saying that SPC’s usually don’t convince people how to vote. This answer says that SPC’s usually convince people to vote the opposite way.

(C) This strengthens but is not necessary. If we negate it and say that people who regularly read SPC’s expose themselves to contrary opinions quite a bit, the author can still argue “yeah, but that doesn’t change anything, since they’ve already made a decision about whom to vote for.”

(D) The author never made a distinction between “regular” readers and “occasional” readers, so he doesn’t have to assume there’s any difference between the behavior of those two groups.

(E) This does a good job of connecting PREM language (“once they have made a decision about which candidate to vote for”) and CONC language (“people can rarely be persuaded”).

You can see how if we negate (E), it gives us Objection #2 from above.
Negated-(E): “People OFTEN can be persuaded to change their minds, even though they had made a decision”. This allows us to argue that “even though people have made a decision about whom to vote for, SPC’s actually DO often persuade voters how to vote.

Hope this helps.