PrepTest 140

Incorrect. This answer can feel tempting—one might think that this suggests the voters who gave Lopez the election weren't the ones who watched the debate, so those viewers may not have been predisposed to supporting Lopez. But that's an assumption—the people who watched the debate still could have been representative of voters as a whole. Without directly attacking the representativeness of the viewers, this answer doesn't weaken the argument.

Incorrect. The stimulus is about the viewers of the televised debate, not those who were present in the live audience, so this answer is out of scope.

Incorrect. This is a hard answer to eliminate. This can make it feel as if it calls the representativeness of the viewership into question. And it does, to a certain extent. However, it doesn't do so to a level that weakens the argument. This is because even if the people who watched the debate were more likely to support Tanner than those who didn't, the vast majority who watched the debate could still have been Lopez supporters. Additionally, there's no indication of what percentage of each group is made up of voters—if the group that watched the debate almost all turned out to vote, but the group that didn't showed up to the polls at a much lower rate, then that could skew the comparison (after all, someone who didn't vote didn't vote for Tanner).

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Weaken

Stimulus Summary:
Phenomenon Ð Most people who watched the debate thought Lopez won
Explanation Ð The viewers were biased in favor of Lopez
Support Ð Lopez won the election

Answer Anticipation:
This argument falls into the phenomenon/explanation pattern, but it can be hard to see how the support for the explanation supports it. How would the eventual outcome of the election show that people were biased in favor of Lopez? The only way this makes sense is if the author of the argument is arguing that since Lopez won, she had more support, and so the viewership naturally had more Lopez supporters who would say she won. In other words, it's treating the viewers and respondents as representative of voters.

There are two issues with that jump!

First, there's no indication that the viewers were representative of voters as a whole. After all, it could be mostly those who haven't yet made up their mind who watch a debate to help them figure out who to vote for.

Second, there's a timeline issue here—the argument is using what happened in the election to determine public sentiment during the debate, which happened before the election. It's possible that people's minds could have changed in the period between, and so the higher level of support for Lopez in the election wasn't present before/during the debate.

Any answer that highlights the sampling or timeline flaw can weaken this argument, so let's look for an answer addressing either.

Answer Explanation:
This answer choice plays into both flaws in the stimulus. It calls into question the representativeness of the viewers in stating that they supported the person who lost the election, which also hints at some changing their minds in the meantime. This argues against the author's explanation of the viewers giving the debate "win" to Lopez because of bias—most were actually biased against her, so she must have had quite a performance to get the win!

Key Takeaway:
Whenever the LSAT is using a premise from a different time period than the conclusion, there's a timeline flaw going on. Things can change over time, but arguments that use the past to predict the future (or, here, the future to draw an inference about the past) are assuming that there were no relevant changes in the meantime, which is a flaw if it's not established as true.

Incorrect. This would still highlight that there was more support for her than Tanner.