Campaigning for election to provincial or state office frequently requ

­This question helps us understand the distinction between necessary and sufficient assumptions. It is all based on quantifiers here.

Premise: Campaigning for election to provincial or state office frequently requires that a candidate cater to the interests of national party officials.

Conclusion: The elected officials who campaign for reelection while they are in office thus often fail to serve the interests of their local constituencies.

The conclusion is not that elected officials who campaign for reelection while they are in office always fail to serve the interests of their local constituencies. We are saying 'they often fail to serve.' They are required to cater to national party officials and hence they often fail to serve local interests. They could sometimes serve local interests while catering to national party officials, but they often fail.

What is the assumption here? That if an elected official caters to national party officials, he could fail to serve the interests of the local constituencies. This is necessary.

Look at the options.

(A) Catering to the interests of national party officials sometimes conflicts with serving the interests of a provincial or state official’s local constituencies.

Correct. This is an assumption. Let's negate it. Negation of 'sometimes' will be 'never'

Negated (A): Catering to the interests of national party officials never conflicts with serving the interests of a provincial or state official’s local constituencies.

Now can our conclusion hold? No. We are given that Catering to the interests of national party officials never conflicts with local constituencies' interests. Then the elected officials would not fail to serve the interests of their local constituencies while campaigning. Makes complete sense.

This is the answer.

(B) Only by catering to the interests of national party officials can those who hold provincial or state office win reelection.

Our conclusion is not about winning elections. It is about elected officials failing to serve the interests of their local constituencies.

(C) The interests of local constituencies are well served only by elected officials who do not cater to the interests of national party officials.

Now this is interesting and it may make you question your selection of (A) even though you were sure that (A) was correct. That is because it is a sufficient assumption which fits better with the conclusion but is not the right answer when we are looking for a necessary assumption (called just 'assumption').
It tells us that not catering to national party officials is necessary to serve the interests of local constituencies. But this is not an assumption of the author. He only says that they often fail to serve the interests of local constituencies, not that they cannot serve the interests of local constituencies if they cater to national party officials. Hence this option is not a necessary assumption.

It is, in fact, a sufficient assumption, not necessary. Let's plug it with the premises to see whether the conclusion logically follows.

Premises:
Campaigning for election to provincial or state office frequently requires that a candidate cater to the interests of national party officials.
Not catering to national party officials is necessary to serve the interests of local constituencies

Conclusion: The elected officials who campaign for reelection while they are in office thus often fail to serve the interests of their local constituencies.

Our conclusion logically follows from the given premises now.

Hence option (C) is not a necessary assumption but a sufficient assumption.

(D) Officials elected to provincial or state office are obligated to serve only the interests of constituents who belong to the same party as do the officials.

Irrelevant. No discussion on which type of local constituents they are obligated to serve.

(E) All elected officials are likely to seek reelection to those offices that are not limited to one term.

Whether all elected officials seek reelection or not, we don't care. We are discussing what happens when they do seek reelection.

Answer (A)

Discussion on Assumption Questions: https://youtu.be/O0ROJfljRLUA Hard Assumption Question: https://youtu.be/0j4tovGifIg

(1)Campaigning for electoin to provincial or state office frequently requires candidate to spend much time and enery catering to interest of national party officials
(2)National party officials can help candidate to win office
(3)The elected officials who campaign for re-election while they are in office thus often fail to serve the interests of their local constituencies

1,2 --> Premise
3 ----> Conclusion

We need to find an answer choice that holds up the conclusion.


Which one of the following is an assumption made by the argument?

(A) Catering to the interests of national party officials sometimes conflicts with serving the interests of a provincial or state official’s local constituencies.
- We're not discussing conflict of interst, but a failure to serve the local constituencies the officials represent.


(B) Only by catering to the interests of national party officials can those who hold provincial or state office win reelection.
- Does not tells us that elected officials will fail to serve the interest of local constituencies because they are busy hosting national party officials

(C) The interests of local constituencies are well served only by elected officials who do not cater to the interests of national party officials.
- This one will fill in the logic gap. If elected official can only served the interests of local constituencies well if they do not cater to the interest of national party officials, then our conclusion is true.

(D) Officials elected to provincial or state office are obligated to serve only the interests of constituents who belong to the same party as do the officials.
- Out of scope

(E) All elected officials are likely to seek reelection to those offices that are not limited to one term.
- Out of scope

(C) it is

A is the best...the argument here is about neglecting the interests of the constituences

Negation test will lead only to A

The negation test can be tricky to implement, partly because there are often multiple ways to negate an answer choice. Another way to think about assumption questions is to ask, "does this answer choice NEED to be true in order for the author's argument to hold up?"

Here's (C):

The word "only" stands out here. Does it need to be true that locals can ONLY be well served by provincial/state officials who don't cater to national interests?

Nope, that goes too far. The author concludes that "the elected officials who campaign for reelection while they are in office thus OFTEN fail to serve the interests of their local consistencies." So, the author doesn't say that provincial/state officials who serve national interests ALWAYS stink. They just often fail to serve local interests. There may be a few provincial/state officials who can serve both national and local interests. That means that we don't NEED to assume the information in (C).

Compare that to (A):

The word "sometimes" is important in (A). To conclude that provincial/state officials seeking reelection sometimes fail their local constituents, it must be true that sometimes the local and national interests conflict.

We absolutely need the info in (A) in order for the argument to hold up, so (A) is an assumption made by the argument.

I hope that helps!

C is the assumption here.. where in it says that there is only one way to win the re election.

What is wrong with C. A & C are quite alike.

A because:

Conclusion in the statement :

“The elected officials who campaign for reelection while they are in office thus often fail to serve the interests of their local constituenciesâ€

campaigning for election to provincial or state office frequently requires that a candidate spend much time and energy catering to the interests of national party officials who can help the candidate to win office. The elected officials who campaign for reelection while they are in office thus often fail to serve the interests of their local constituencies.

The two blue sentences just prove that these two activities are conflicting sometimes.

But C says '......are well served only by ........'

I think it's not necessarily the cause and effect relationship.

Besides, it's too absolute.

OA is A.

Thanks

+1 A

If the interests of the party don't conflict with the interests of the local citizens, we could not conclude that the elected officials who campaign for reelection will fail in serving the interests of those citizens.

C is pretty much an extremist view.Assuming it is not viable.

Campaigning for election to provincial or state office frequently requires that a candidate spend much time and energy catering to the interests of national party officials who can help the candidate to win office. The elected officials who campaign for reelection while they are in office thus often fail to serve the interests of their local consistencies.

Pre thinking - Conclusion - The elected officials fail to serve the interests of their local constituencies.
Argument 1 - They serve national party officials who will help him to win the elections.

Assumption - Candidate cant do both the things simultaneously. He can also serve his constituency and the national party officials.

Which one of the following is an assumption made by the argument?

(A) Catering to the interests of national party officials sometimes conflicts with serving the interests of a provincial or state official’s local constituencies. - When conflict happens, he cant do both things simultaneously.

(B) Only by catering to the interests of national party officials can those who hold provincial or state office win reelection. - We are not concerned how we will win the elections.

(C) The interests of local constituencies are well served only by elected officials who do not cater to the interests of national party officials. -extreme assumption

(D) Officials elected to provincial or state office are obligated to serve only the interests of constituents who belong to the same party as do the officials. - All the constituents may not be from the same party. the argument is talking about candidates' own constituency.

(E) All elected officials are likely to seek reelection to those offices that are not limited to one term. - Irrelevant, we dont care about which offices they want to be elected to.

Campaigning for election to provincial or state office frequently requires that a candidate spend much time and energy catering to the interests of national party officials who can help the candidate to win office. The elected officials who campaign for reelection while they are in office thus often fail to serve the interests of their local consistencies.

Which one of the following is an assumption made by the argument?

(A) Catering to the interests of national party officials sometimes conflicts with serving the interests of a provincial or state official’s local constituencies. - CORRECT. If so, then it is equally possible that interests of their local consistencies are left out. If not then there is trouble.

(B) Only by catering to the interests of national party officials can those who hold provincial or state office win reelection. - WRONG. Not necessary.

(C) The interests of local constituencies are well served only by elected officials who do not cater to the interests of national party officials. - WORNG. Unfortunately chose this one. Well at one point is true but this is not necessarily always true. Since there's still scope left after, it is not the correct answer.

(D) Officials elected to provincial or state office are obligated to serve only the interests of constituents who belong to the same party as do the officials. - WORNG. Irrelevant. Scope shift

(E) All elected officials are likely to seek reelection to those offices that are not limited to one term. - WRONG. Everything is wrong with this one.

What might have been a possible reason behind the highlighted text? A and C are equally good.

Answer A.

Here's why I chose B over A: the use of "sometimes" in option A and the use of "often" in the argument's conclusion.
Conclusion: The elected officials... often fail to serve the interests of their local constituencies.
Option A: Catering to... party officials sometimes conflicts with serving the interests of... local constituencies.

If negated, A will read: Catering to... party officials SOMETIMES DOES NOT CONFLICT with serving the interests of... local constituencies.
This does not break the argument, since our conclusion is that elected official OFTEN FAIL to serve local constituencies.
Re-election campaign can sometimes not conflict with serving local constituencies but could result in candidates often failing to serve. It's consistent. That's why I eliminated A.

What's wrong with my reasoning?

(A) Catering to the interests of national party officials sometimes conflicts with serving the interests of a provincial or state official???s local constituencies.

Negation -Catering to the interests of national party officials never conflicts with serving the interests of a provincial or state official???s local constituencies. This destroys the argument.


(C) The interests of local constituencies are well served only by elected officials who do not cater to the interests of national party officials.

Negation 1 - The interests of local constituencies are well served not only by elected officials who do not cater to the interests of national party officials. Does not destroy the argument.

Negation 2 - The interests of local constituencies are well served only by elected officials who cater to the interests of national party officials. Could a contender.

Since the negation leads to conflicting results. I will go with A.

Is my understanding correct here? Please help. Thank you