LSAT 155 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q15

LR Question 15 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Candidate: In each election in the last ten years, the candidate…

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning

CONCLUSION: In order to attract additional voters in the northeastern part of the district without alienating other voters, the candidate need only go on record as favouring property tax reform.

REASONING: For the last ten years, the candidate who supported property tax reform received most of the votes in the northeastern part of the district. Other areas have no pattern of voting for or against property tax reform.

ANALYSIS: The candidate believes that being pro-property tax reform will cause the voters in the northeastern district to vote for her. However, she doesn’t have enough evidence to conclude this. The voting records are correlated with candidates that support property tax reform, but that does not mean that property tax reform is the reason they voted for those candidates.

Maybe the candidates who won the majority of votes in that area of the district had general platforms that were consistent with the values the area held, including being pro-property tax reform. Just being pro-property tax reform may not be enough.

___________

1. This is a moral criticism of the candidate’s plan, but it isn’t a flaw in her logic.
2. The politician draws opposite conclusions about voting patterns because the voting patterns are different. This is not a flaw.
3. The politician isn’t basing the conclusion on a small sample. She considered the voting patterns of every area.
4. CORRECT. The politician is assuming that pro-property tax reform candidates won because of that stance, but it may be just a correlation.
5. The conclusion isn’t based solely on data that’s ten years old. The data covers the last ten years.

Recap: The question begins with “Candidate: In each election in the last ten years, the candidate”. It is a Flawed Reasoning question. Learn how to master LSAT Flaw questions on the LSAT Logical Reasoning question types page.