PrepTest 154, Section 2, Question 15
Journalist: Despite the recent spate of depressing political(49 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(8 more words not shown)
- AThe economic policies(13 more words not shown)
- BThe investment choices(8 more words not shown)
- CThe economic attitudes(12 more words not shown)
- DVoters generally attribute(14 more words not shown)
- EVoters are usually(8 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Buying stocks doesn't necessarily mean thinking everything is going well. An investor might worry about inflation eating away at cash and decide stocks are the better option, even while feeling uneasy about the economy. That's one possible reason for the behavior besides the journalist's explanation.
Even if we grant that the investors are optimistic, the election prediction raises another question. Do their views tell us how voters generally feel? Some investors may also be voters, but that doesn't make investors representative of the whole electorate. Other voters could have a much less favorable view of the economy.
And optimism doesn't guarantee support for the current leadership. Someone could think the economy is doing well but would do even better under the opposition. The premise only says confidence tends to favor incumbents; it doesn't say confidence decides every vote.
What we’re looking for
For the required assumption, look at what this particular route to the election forecast needs. The journalist moves from investors' behavior, to investors' confidence, to voter confidence, to the party retaining power. The move from investors to voters needs a connection. Their economic outlooks must be similar enough for the investors' optimism to tell us something about voters generally.
Working the answers
- A
The reasoning doesn't require government policies to be a major cause of stock-market growth. Voters could feel optimistic and tend to favor incumbents even if other factors produced the growth. The argument uses a relationship between confidence and political support, not an established account of which policies actually drive the market. 'Major' makes A especially demanding, but the causal claim itself isn't required.
- B
This says political preferences tend to show up in investment choices. That doesn't establish that the investors being observed share the economic attitudes of voters generally. We could know that some people invest partly according to their politics and still know nothing about the broader electorate's confidence. B doesn't supply the group-to-group connection the prediction relies on.
- CCorrect
If investors are optimistic while voters generally have a very different economic outlook, the journalist can't use the first group's confidence as evidence of the second group's. C supplies the needed similarity in economic attitudes. It doesn't guarantee the election result or fix every possible objection; it supports a connection required by this argument's route to that result.
- D
Voters don't have to attribute responsibility to previous governments for confidence to favor current leaders. They might do so, but the argument doesn't rely on that view of responsibility. Its stated connection concerns present confidence and incumbent advantage.
- E
The argument doesn't compare loyalty to parties with loyalty to individual politicians. Either sort of loyalty could exist while economic confidence also mattered. E gives us a separate claim about political behavior without establishing that the investors' outlook reflects voters' outlook.
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