People’s political behavior frequently does not match their rhetoric.

I understand the temptation for GMAT students to study LSAT problems, mostly because of the huge amount of official LSAT material available (there are almost a hundred full-length official LSATs, comprising over 10,000 questions in total, available for purchase).

If you're going to use LSAT material, though, you should always ask yourself "How would this problem work/look if it were on the GMAT?" Almost every LSAT problem would need some kind of 'adaptation' to be GMAT-relevant—if indeed it can be made relevant at all (lots of LSAT problems cannot).



This problem asks for the role played by one specific statement in an argument. In this case, there's a ready analogue on the GMAT: the 'boldface statement' CR problem type.

But, even though the analogy is unusually close, the problem statement and answer choices don't look like their counterparts on the GMAT. When you study this kind of problem, it's imperative to consider how to map it onto a GMAT-like template.



THE QUESTION:

In this problem, nothing is boldfaced; instead, the content of one sentence is repeated in the question 'stem'.

The GMAT would instead put that one sentence into boldface and remove the specs from the stem:





SOLVING THE PROBLEM:

In my experience, most students find it very helpful to give the speaker/narrator a name and try to imagine that she/he is LITERALLY SAYING these things, in language that wouldn't be out of place in educated but casual conversation.
Also, if your native language is other than English—and especially if most of your spoken conversations happen in that non-English language—you may find it helpful to translate the statements as you go (if you're able to do so fairly efficiently).

If you do these things, then you ought to find it much more intuitive to grasp that:
• the FIRST statement ("People’s political behavior frequently does not match their rhetoric"—however you 'translate' this) is a GENERALITY;
• the LAST statement ("voters often reelect politicians whose behavior they resent") is ONE EXAMPLE of that general principle;
• the BOLDFACED statement ("Although many complain about government intervention in their lives, they tend not to reelect inactive politicians") combines with the following statement to 'PROVE' / SUPPORT' the example in the last sentence.



THE ANSWER CHOICES:

These don't look at all like the options on GMAT boldfaced-statement problems. They're full of specs, whereas the GMAT options are invariably phrased in terms of more generalized abstractions.
In cases such as this—where there are marked differences between the two tests—it's crucial that you try your best to 'adapt' at least the correct answer, and ideally the wrong ones too, to GMAT conventions.

The correct answer says
It is a premise offered in support of the conclusion that voters often reelect politicians whose behavior they resent.

The GMAT doesn't put specs in the answers for these problems, so let's sub out that colored part—whose role is noted above (under "solving the problem").
It is a premise offered in support of one specific example of a general principle.
(Mentioning the general principle here is of the essence! The GMAT would almost certainly do so, because the general principle—stated in the first sentence—is the main point of the entire monologue. The correct LSAT answer, by contrast, makes no mention of that first sentence at all.)

Finally, GMAT boldfaced-statement answers tend to include the narrator's judgment—i.e., whether the narrator agrees or disagrees with some point (or neither, as in the case of factual background statements).
Including that part, we have
It is a premise offered in support of one specific example of a general principle that the narrator asserts.

That's a GMAT-like correct answer.

It's okay if you don't make every single transformation that I did here. What matters is that you can recognize and make some of the necessary changes, and that you come away from the exercise with a better and more precise understanding of the various conventions followed by GMAT problems.

Between B and E. I go with B. E is too generic. OA?

clearly B

People’s political behavior frequently does not match their rhetoric
E: people’s behavior never matches their political beliefs

Premise: Although many complain about government intervention in their lives, they tend not to reelect inactive politicians
Premise: But a politician’s activity consists largely in the passage of laws whose enforcement affects voters’ lives (so active politicians intervene with people's lives .. and people resent this intervention)
Conclusion: voters often reelect politicians whose behavior they resent

So B is correct.

I think you are right..!!. Your explanation makes some sense.

glad it helped .. don't forget to press kudos if you liked the explanation

this one points out the main difference between the dilemma~thanks

Adding Official Explanation

The “role of a statement” asks you to think about how the author is assembling the argument. Look
for explicit and implicit structural signals.

The conclusion, signaled by “thus,” is that voters often reelect politicians they resent, and the two
sentences that precede it act as the evidence: People don’t reelect inactive politicians, but “active” means
passing laws that affect people—even though people say they don’t want government affecting them.
Anyway, the statement in question is one of those premises, so (B) is correct.
The statement in question, about the politicians people don’t reelect, is sort of a mirror image of
the conclusion about those whom people do reelect, so (A)’s description of the relationship is way off. The
general assertion in question is hardly a concrete example of anything, (C), and since “the claim that people
complain about government intervention” is preceded by “Although,” the generalization in question
contrasts with this claim rather than following from it, (D). The author says that people’s political behavior
“frequently” doesn’t match their political rhetoric, so (E) is a 180 by suggesting that it “never” does so.

Best,
Gladi
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People’s political behavior frequently does not match their rhetoric. Although many complain about government intervention in their lives, they tend not to reelect inactive politicians. But a politician’s activity consists largely in the passage of laws whose enforcement affects voters’ lives. Thus, voters often reelect politicians whose behavior they resent.

Which one of the following most accurately describes the role played in the argument by the claim that people tend not to reelect inactive politicians?


(A) It describes a phenomenon for which the argument’s conclusion is offered as an explanation.
-this has it backwards...the fact that people tend not to re-elect INACTIVE politicians is part of the reason why they re-elect those whose behaviour they resent

(B) It is a premise offered in support of the conclusion that voters often reelect politicians whose behavior they resent. CORRECT

(C) It is offered as an example of how a politician’s activity consists largely in the passage of laws whose enforcement interferes with voters’ lives.
-no....simply untrue

(D) It is a generalization based on the claim that people complain about government intervention in their lives.
-no, untrue

(E) It is cited as evidence that people’s behavior never matches their political beliefs.
-false
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The explanation above can’t convince me, and I found a much better explanation in Manhattan forum: https://www.manhattanprep.com/lsat/foru ... -t431.html

The conclusion of this rather tricky argument is stated first: in terms of politics, people's actions often do not match their words. The proof is an involved example which itself concludes -- in the last sentence -- that voters reelect politicians whose behavior the voters don't like. The important thing to realize is that everything beyond the first sentence is an elaborate example of people not doing what they say. It leads up to an intermediate conclusion, but don't be fooled by the "thus" and assume that the last sentence has to be the final conclusion.

The reason that the rest of the argument, including that last sentence, is proof for the initial and ultimate conclusion is that it shows people saying one thing -- that they dislike government intervention into their lives -- but then doing another -- not reelecting the politicians who stay out of their lives. Since political activity is equated with interventions in voters' lives, we can say that these people are not reelecting politicians who shy away from intervening, a choice which seems strange since these voters supposedly want politicians to stay out of their lives).

The question asks what role the fact that people don't vote for inactive politicians plays in the argument. As (B) notes, that piece of information is leading to the intermediate conclusion presented in the last sentence of the argument. This answer is tempting to incorrectly eliminate because it does not refer to that conclusion as an intermediate conclusion, however an intermediate conclusion is a conclusion nonetheless.

(A) is tempting, since the conclusion does relate closely to that fact, however the final conclusion does not explain that fact, and actually, the conclusion does not explain the intermediate conclusion. The intermediate conclusion is an example--a sort of premise--given to support the final conclusion. While a conclusion can explain a premise (dogs are violent, thus it must be that canines descended from wolves), but in this case, the fact that political behavior doesn't match rhetoric doesn't explain the discrepancy, it uses that as an example to generalize.

(C) is incorrect because people not voting for inactive politicians is not an example of politician's actions consisting of interference. The two facts are used in conjunction to build the intermediate premise.

(D) is incorrect because people complaining about government intervention does not lead to people not voting for inactive politicians. If anything, those complaints would lead us to expect that voters would vote for those politicians!

(E) is tempting but too extreme. Nowhere does the argument state that people's behavior NEVER matches their beliefs.

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