LSAT 88, Logical Reasoning I, Q15, LSATHacks

LR Question 15 Explanation, by LSATHacks

QUESTION TEXT: Journalist: Despite the recent spate of depressing political…

QUESTION TYPE: Necessary Assumption

CONCLUSION: It’s likely the party now in power will retain power after the election.

REASONING: Many investors are putting money into stocks. This means they’re confident of the country’s economy’s increased growth. Voter confidence in the economy favours incumbent political leaders.

ANALYSIS: The journalist starts by talking about what investors are doing. Then in the last sentence, he’s talking about voter confidence. Investors and voters aren’t necessarily the same population.

Therefore, our necessary assumption needs to be something that allows the journalist to draw conclusions about voter confidence, based on what he knows about investor actions. Thus, our rephrase would be something like: “investors are representative of the average voter when it comes to the economy.”

___________

1. “Major factor” is too strong, and the government’s economic polices aren’t really talked about, nor do we know if these policies are producing stock market “growth”.
2. Nothing in the stimulus points to this. We only know that investors are putting money into stocks, not voters. We don’t know about voters’ investment choices nor their political preferences.
3. CORRECT. We need the investor’s attitudes to be in line with those of general voters so that we can infer that voters would vote of the party to stay in power.
4. This answer choice would show that the current party in power might not stay in power. If voters attribute good economic conditions to the previous government, then that wouldn’t give them incentive to vote for the current government.
5. The stimulus doesn’t make this distinction so we can’t make it either.

Recap: The question begins with “Journalist: Despite the recent spate of depressing political”. It is a Necessary Assumption question. Learn how to master LSAT Necessary questions on the LSAT Logical Reasoning question types page.

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