Whenever a major political scandal erupts before an election and voters blame the scandal on all parties about equally, virtually all incumbents, from whatever party, seeking reelection are returned to office. However, when voters blame such a scandal on only one party, incumbents from that party are likely to be defeated by challengers from other parties. The proportion of incumbents who seek reelection is high and remarkably constant from election to election.

If the voters' reactions are guided by a principle, which one of the following principles would best account for the contrast in reactions described above?

(A) Whenever one incumbent is responsible for one major political scandal and another incumbent is responsible for another, the consequences for the two incumbents should be the same.

(B) When a major political scandal is blamed on incumbents from all parties, that judgment is more accurate than any judgment that incumbents from only on party are to blame.

(C) Incumbents who are rightly blamed for a major political scandal should not seek reelection, but if they do, they should not be returned to office.

(D) Major political scandals can practically always be blamed on incumbents, but whether those incumbents should be voted out of office depends on who their challengers are.

(E) When major political scandals are less the responsibility of individual incumbents than of the parties to which they belong, whatever party was responsible must be penalized when possible.

please explain your answers

if I had 2 min for this on the exam, I would go with C, I think it's tough

(A) we don't care about the consequences... we don't know what they are... OUT OF SCOPE

(B) we don't know whether the judgment is accurate, we know nothing about it from the argument itself OUT OF SCOPE

(E) again... cheezy.. penalty? where does the argument talk about it? OUT OF SCOPE

now to me the war is b/w C and D, but before we look into those remember this quote from the argument:
However, when voters blame such a scandal on only one party, incumbents from that party are likely to be defeated by challengers from other parties.

based on this I chose C... it shows contrast that the question is asking for
honestly I didn't even try to understand D as it took me a while just to digest the argument and C looked like IT to me, especially regarding contrast... so POE and this quote lead to my answer

C can't be right. The incumbents are not blamed for the scandal, it's the parties that are blamed.

D for me.
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for every person who doesn't try because he is
afraid of loosing , there is another person who
keeps making mistakes and succeeds..

D.

Major political scandals can practically always be blamed on incumbents, but whether those incumbents should be voted out of office depends on who their challengers are.

If the challengers are also responsible for the scandal, then voters are left with no option.

I went with C. Very tricky one. OA please!!
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Hema

Stroke of genius! I got D

All other choices, except E, talk mostly about incumbents rather than political parties. But the passage is talking about blames on political parties.
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SAID BUSINESS SCHOOL, OXFORD - MBA CLASS OF 2008