Q15: Legislator: My staff conducted a poll in which

LR Question 15 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Legislator: My staff conducted a poll in which my…

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning

CONCLUSION: The legislator’s constituents would support a lower income tax.

REASONING: The legislator’s constituents said in a poll that they don’t support high taxes.

ANALYSIS: This argument makes a classic LSAT error. There is a big difference between “high/low” and “higher/lower”.

The constituents might think high taxes are bad. Meaning, for example, they don’t support taxes above 45%. However, those same constituents might be fine with any tax rates that aren’t high (i.e. lower than 45%).

So if corporate income taxes are only 30%, then constituents might not want taxes any lower.

The LSAT ruthlessly tests your ability to spot the difference between an absolute measure like “high” and a relative measure like “lower”.

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This doesn’t matter. The legislator didn’t claim to be speaking for the country as a whole.
CORRECT. If the constituents don’t think that the current corporate income tax is high then they might not want to lower it.
An answer can’t be the flaw if it didn’t happen. The argument didn’t mention “an absence of evidence that constituents opposed the bill”!
This describes circular reasoning. This didn’t happen – it’s a rare flaw.
Example of flaw: My constituents support the bill because they support it.
This is a different flaw. It involves the author not noticing they’ve proven a point. It either requires them to ignore evidence, or make a contradiction.
Example of flaw: I know that winning the lottery always makes someone rich.

I also know that John won the lottery. Is he rich? I dunno. Winning the lottery is only consistent with being rich: it doesn’t always happen.