PrepTest 136, Section 4, Question 1
According to the official results of last week's(33 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(11 more words not shown)
- AThe argument uses(15 more words not shown)
- BThe argument presumes(11 more words not shown)
- CThe argument rejects(15 more words not shown)
- DThe argument fails(16 more words not shown)
- EThe argument defends(11 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
How does knowing your friends' votes tell you how the whole country voted?
The official results say 80 percent supported the proposal. The speaker knows people who opposed it. Both things could be true. Imagine a proposal that is unpopular in one small town but popular throughout most of the country. Someone whose friends all live in that town could hear nothing but opposition and still be surrounded by a very unusual slice of the electorate.
People also tend to know others with similar backgrounds and views. Asking more people within the same circle would not necessarily solve that problem. The missing question is whether this circle reflects the much larger group whose votes are being counted.
What we’re looking for
So I'm not convinced that the results must be rigged. We would need better evidence about the national vote. For the flaw question, look for the leap from the people this speaker happens to know to the population as a whole.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
The sample is everyone the speaker knows; the population is the national electorate. The argument treats the first group's votes as reliable evidence of what most people in the second group did, without showing that the groups have similar views. A local or social circle could be overwhelmingly against a proposal that most voters support.
- B
This would mean using the claim that the results were rigged as a reason to believe they were rigged. The speaker instead offers evidence about acquaintances' votes. That evidence is inadequate, but it is not just the conclusion repeated as a premise.
- C
The speaker does not attack the character or motives of the people reporting the results. The challenge concerns a supposed conflict between the official numbers and the votes of people the speaker knows. We need to examine that comparison, not a personal attack that never occurs.
- D
Nobody argues about how people should have voted. The dispute is about how they actually voted and whether the reported totals accurately reflect those votes. There is no shift from a recommendation to a description.
- E
The speaker is trying to estimate what most people did. That is different from saying a belief must be true because most people hold it. The error lies in the evidence used to estimate the vote, not in treating popularity as proof of truth.
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