Logical reasoning PrepTest 135 · Section 4 · Question 2

Question prompt

Syndicated political columnists often Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: E

The notes below walk through why it fits the stem and how to eliminate the rest.

Argument or Facts

Argument

Valid or Flawed

Flawed

Question Type

Strengthen with Necessary Premise Questions

Stimulus Summary

Columnists try to influence votes, but nearly all readers have made up their minds by the time they read a column, so these columnists almost always fail at their goal.

Answer Anticipation

The columnists have a goal - they want to influence voters. However, there’s a problem - the voters have already made up their minds by the time they read the columns. Does that mean that the columnists can’t succeed? Not at all - people could still change their minds after reading the column. This argument relies on readers not being willing/able to change their minds after reaching a decision, so we should look for an answer stating that.

Answer choices

  1. A
    Syndicated columnists influence the Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A is not credited
    The conclusion of the argument is that syndicated columnists fail to influence their readers, so an answer highlighting those who are influenced by the columnists runs counter to that.
  2. B
    The attempts of syndicated Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B is not credited
    While this answer does align with the columnists failing to persuade voters to vote in accord with their columns, it doesn’t have to be true for the argument to work. Having no influence over them is enough for the conclusion to hold true, so having the opposite influence over them isn’t necessary.
  3. C
    People who regularly read Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited
    This answer might complicate figuring out whether the columnists had an impact on voters, but it isn’t required to reach a conclusion that they didn’t have an impact on voters.
  4. D
    Regular readers of columns Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D is not credited
    The relative persuadability of readers vs. non-readers is out of scope since the stimulus doesn’t care about that comparison. The argument only cares about those who do read the columns.
  5. E
    People rarely can be Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E matches the stem
    This answer highlights the gap in the argument we identified during our Anticipation step. If people can easily be persuaded to change their minds after coming to a decision, then the argument falls apart. So it must be necessary for the argument to work to assume that people don’t change their minds.

What this tests

Question analytics

Based on historical answer selection rates for this question.

Answer choice distribution

  1. A 6%
  2. B 2%
  3. C 3%
  4. D 2%
  5. E Credited 87%

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