#19 - Historian: The Land Party achieved its only national

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Question #19: Strengthen-EXCEPT. The correct answer choice is (A).

The historian makes a causal argument, attributing the 1935 success of the Land Party to a combination of two factors:

• (1) the party was able to address the concerns of certain demographic groups that represented the bulk of Banestria's population in 1935, and
  (2) the economic problems these groups were facing in 1935

Four of the five answer choices in this Strengthen-EXCEPT question will bolster the causal claim in the conclusion. The correct answer choice will not.

Answer choice (A) is the correct answer choice. Read carefully: this answer choice makes a claim about urban, not suburban groups. If answer choice (A) said "suburban" instead of "urban," this would have shown that were the cause does not occur, the effect does not occur (no attempts were made to address these interests, and so the party lost). Unfortunately, answer choice (A) only talks about urban groups, which have no bearing on the conclusion of the argument. Therefore, this is the correct answer choice to this Strengthen-EXCEPT question.

Answer choice (B) is incorrect, because is reinforces the notion that a party can appeal to voters by focusing on their problems.

Answer choice (C) is incorrect, because it bolsters the correlation between election success and the economic distress in the agricultural sector (second premise).

Answer choice (D) is incorrect, because it shows that where the cause does not occur (no other party focused on these issues), the effect does not occur (the other parties all lost). This is a classic way of strengthening a causal claim.

Answer choice (E) is incorrect, because it correlates economic distress with voter turnout. If true, this shows that economic distress was certainly a factor that led to the success of the Land Party.

[moshei24]

If (A) said "suburban groups" instead of "urban groups" it would strengthen it, right? Because if in the past they had made the same attempt that they make in the stimulus with suburban groups, and since in the past they lost, it would weaken the argument, because why didn't they ever win in the past then?

Do I understand that properly?

Thanks,
Moshe

[Adam Tyson]

You do! No need to elaborate on that - you have a good handle on it.

By the way, it's a causal argument - if A said suburban instead of urban, it would have been an example of "where the cause is absent, the effect is also absent."

Adam

[lsatstudying11]

Hello!

For this question, I am really struggling to make sense of D because of the idea of 'national victory.' In my mind, I did not understand this to be something like the Presidential Elections in the US where only only candidate can win. Instead, I thought of it like a parliamentary system where parties win a certain number of seats. In turn, I read 'national victory' to be something like winning (even just one seat) in the nation's parliament. And so, whereas before, the Land Party never even had a seat in parliament, now, with their 'national victory,' they won 1 seat or maybe 95 seats out of 367. But D seems to rely on the assumption that it is like the US Pres Elections or winning a seat in Congress. What would tip us off in the language of the question that 'national victory' is all or nothing? Thanks for your help!!

[Robert Carroll]

lsat,

I don't see that there is any such assumption to answer choice (D). If no other major party, no matter how many parties there were, addressed the concerns in the stimulus, that helps eliminate a weakness - that some other party also addressed the concerns that were supposed to be the special reason the Land Party did so well. The more success other parties have addressing those issues, the less room there is for the Land Party to have success doing so. It's not as if multiple parties can't all address the issues, but surely, the more other parties do the same thing as the Land Party, the less likely we are to think that the Land Party's "only national victory" can be due to those causes (why not keep having no victory at all if the other parties are stealing your thunder?).

Whether the Land Party's victory was winning 1 seat of a few hundred or winning a veto-proof majority, answer choice (D) helps the argument.

Robert Carroll

[sabrinayadidi]

Hi, why would saying "suburban" strengthen it while saying "urban" does not? Would it have to say both to strengthen it?

So, A doesn't strengthen it but it also doesn't weaken it correct? It does not do anything to the argument?

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi sabrinayadidi,

Absolutely right---answer choice (A) doesn't do anything to the argument. It's irrelevant. The key is that our argument is about the suburban and rural voters, and not about the urban voters. An answer choice that said how the Land Party didn't address urban concerns doesn't impact the causal relationship in the stimulus. It's talking about a similar but different issue and is outside the scope of the relationship in the stimulus.

Hope that helps!