#21 - Whenever a major political scandal erupts before an

[jwooon]

Hi,

Thank you for your response.

I think I understand why (E) is correct in that it is not possible to penalize all parties responsible when all parties are in the wrong (because then who is going to be reelected? nobody!), but what I am having trouble with is eliminating (D) as the right answer.

I do understand why the first portion of the sentence is wrong (because the stimulus does not talk about blaming incumbents, they talk about blaming parties), but why is the second part wrong? I interpreted "depends on who their challengers are" as whether the challengers are also responsible for the major scandal or not.

So for example, let's say that party A and party B are running for reelection (with no other parties running) and a major scandal occurs and all parties are blamed. If we were to apply party A to (D)'s principle, I assumed that party A's challenger was party B, who was ALSO to be blamed for the scandal. In this case, according to the stimulus, party A would not be voted out.

Alternatively, if party A is the only one responsible and party B is not responsible, party A's challenger would be innocent. According to the stimulus, party A would be voted out.

So, couldn't we interpret the difference in reelection above as "whether those incumbents should be voted out depends on who their challengers are (ie. whether their challengers are blamed people or not blamed people)?"

Hope this clarifies what I am confused about!

[Jeff Wren]

Hi jwooon,

In your question, you wrote "I do understand why the first portion of the sentence is wrong (because the stimulus does not talk about blaming incumbents, they talk about blaming parties), but why is the second part wrong?"

The first point to make is that if part of the answer is wrong, the answer itself is wrong. In other words, not every part of an answer needs to be wrong in order for the answer to be incorrect. There are many incorrect answers in logical reasoning that are basically 1/2 right, 1/2 wrong. In fact, sometimes a single word in the answer can make an answer wrong.

However, the second part of Answer D is also wrong. It's important to read these answers at face value and not make assumptions about them. The second half of Answer D states that "whether those incumbents should be voted out of office depends on who their challengers are." You cherry picked one example that fits with this answer and matches the facts in the stimulus.

The problem is that the principle doesn't need to match your example. I could just as easily pick an example that follows the principle but leads to the exact opposite outcome.

Imagine the incumbent of party A is responsible for a major political scandal, but the challenger is completely unqualified, incompetent, and immoral. In this situation, keeping the incumbent in office would be (arguably) following the principle. Notice how this doesn't match the facts in the stimulus.

Likewise, if all parties are responsible for a major political scandal, but the challenger is better qualified for the position in every way, then voting the incumbent out of office would be (arguably) following the principle. Notice how this also doesn't match the facts in the stimulus.

[jwooon]

Thank you for your answer.

I do understand what you are saying where the answer is more so of a "could weaken but also likely to not weaken" AC. Also, you're totally right! I should have eliminated the AC based on the first portion alone, but I was just confused as to whether it was 'wrong enough' to justify eliminating that AC.

I do have an additional question to your response though. Although the principle allows for a possibility that a totally incompetent person could be elected based on the AC, I still thought that it did not matter if that happened since the people's opinion could have been that being involved in a scandal is worse than being incompetent at a job. In other words, I thought that as long as the principle matches up with the scenario in the stimulus in question, no matter how ridiculous (or completely realistic based on the recent political climate) a possible scenario was, it could still be the correct answer.

[Jeff Wren]

Hi jwooon,

You want to make sure that you're clear what you are looking to do in the correct answer. This is a Resolve the Paradox question. The paradox, or odd facts, here is that when a political scandal is blamed on all the parties, the incumbents get reelected, but when a political scandal is blamed on just one party, incumbents of that party lose. You are looking for an answer that explains this difference.

Answer D doesn't explain the difference in the stimulus because you could have the exact same challenger in each situation and the result would be different depending on the which party (or parties) is blamed for the political scandal.

Answer E does explain the difference by stating that what the voters care about is punishing the party who is blamed for the scandal. This explains why the incumbent loses when only the incumbent's party is blamed (to punish the party). This also explains why the incumbent doesn't lose when all parties are blamed (because there isn't a way to punish all of the parties simultaneously through voting since someone has to win).