The new agriculture bill will almost surely fail to pass. The leaders

Question

The new agriculture bill will almost surely fail to pass. The leaders of all major parties have stated that they oppose it.

Which one of the following, if true, adds the most support for the prediction that the agriculture bill will fail to pass?

(A) Most bills that have not been supported by even one leader of a major party have not been passed into law
(B) Most bills that have not been passed into law were not supported by even one member of a major party
(C) If the leaders of all major parties endorse the new agriculture bill, it will pass into law
(D) Most bills that have been passed into law were not unanimously supported by the leaders of all major parties
(E) Most bills that have been passed into law were supported by at least one leader of a major party

Source: LSAT and CR Archive

vineethk929 · Answer

Imo E..all others are out of scope...we have to focus on..the word MOST ..in these kind of sentences

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nightblade354 · Answer

The OA is posted. The answer is (A).

Abhishek009 · Answer

Support of all major parties = Passing of the bill

Thus, None but option (A) augments the reasoning in the highlighted part of the stimulus.

sahilkak · Answer

Why not C, why A, I rejected A because of most

Can anyone explain OA is why A?

LauraOrion · Answer

Hey  sahilkak  --

You're right, (C) is really close, but take a look at the argument presented: All major party leaders oppose the bill, therefore it will not pass. You're looking for support for the bill not passing.

(C)'s argument is that if all of them do support the bill, it will pass. However, giving proof that a bill will pass doesn't mean that the opposite means that the bill won't pass (which is what you're trying to support). Based only on that piece of information, the bill could still pass if the leaders don't support it if every other person votes for it -- (C) doesn't exclude that possibility.

(A) is much more clearly support for the argument. If even one of the party leaders fails to support the bill, it won't pass. Therefore if all of them don't support the bill, it will also not pass since the claim in the argument fits exactly with the information given in (A). (Think about it as a Venn diagram -- the argument fits in to (A) all the way as a circle within a circle and so it guarantees the argument)

Bambi2021 · Answer

I have a hard time ruling out E here. Isnt E just the contrapositive of A? And thus sort of give us the same impact?

Argument says: If all leaders oppose it, then surely fail to pass.

A says: If all leaders oppose it, then most have failed to pass.

E says: If not failed to pass, then all leaders do not oppose it.

Arent both A and E of similar logical strength here?

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OldRedOne · Answer

I agree, it is not clear to me why A is superior to E.

hero_with_1000_faces · Answer

We have no evidence about what happens to bills that lack support from all major party leaders. Maybe bills still pass because enough party members support them.

Only A tells us what happens when bills lack support from party leaders.

CORRECT. This helps. If no leaders support a bill then the bill usually doesn’t pass

MBAB123 · Answer

OldRedOne and Bambi2021
E is wrong because it does not tell you what happens with the bills that were not supported by any of the leaders of the passage. Imagine this scenario in E -
Total number of Bills passed - 100 (80 were supported by at least 1 and 20 were not supported at all). In this scenario, most number of bills passed were supported by at least 1 leader (exactly what option E says). If I were to add that the number of bills (without any support) proposed is also 20, that gives you a 100% success rate of such bills being passed and would weaken the conclusion. Of course the scenario doesn't have to be true, but the possibility that it could occur makes option E wrong.

Hope this helps!

unraveled · Answer

This is my reflection post choosing a wrong answer.
C, D and E are dealing the opposite of the core of the argument i.e. passing of law, when , instead we need to find a support for the core i.e. bill will fail.
So, how could one be so sure that a bill will not pass when leaders of all major parties are opposing it.

Among A and B, B goes off track the moment it mentioned about 'member' of the major party. It is not member but the leader that we are talking about.
POE leaves us with A. A is difficult to choose for the reason that it may seem to be going in extreme when it mentioned about 'support by even leader'.

Also, it is not that that C, D and E lose out because they are talking about passing of bill but for two reasons they are candidates to go wrong.
1. Use of words like 'surely' and 'major' and more makes us stick to the core.
2. One can never be sure about the other side of the core of the argument.

Hope this helpful.

gmatbyexample · Answer

This has created a lot of confusion over the years and the reasoning hasn't helped without a picture. I tried to draw it for you all so you can see what the reasoning looks like if we chart out the picture a little better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAD8qwN0OZk

dhruva09 · Answer

The line highlighted also accommodates the reasoning for option E.
This logic is not sufficient enough to rule out E.

hiteshlimbasiya · Answer

The correct answer is (A).

Analysis:

Premise: Leaders of all major parties oppose the agriculture bill
Conclusion: The bill will almost surely fail to pass

We need an answer that strengthens this prediction.

Option A: "Most bills that have not been supported by even one leader of a major party have not been passed into law"

This directly strengthens the argument. The agriculture bill has ZERO leader support (all leaders oppose it). Option A tells us that when bills lack support from even ONE leader, they typically fail. Since this bill has NO leader support at all, it fits perfectly within this pattern and strengthens the prediction that it will fail.

Why other options don't work:

Option E: "Most bills that have been passed into law were supported by at least one leader of a major party"

This is NOT the contrapositive of A. Option E tells us what passed bills typically HAD (at least one leader's support), but it doesn't tell us what happens to bills WITHOUT any leader support. Just because most passed bills had support doesn't mean bills without support will fail - there could still be exceptions. E leaves open the possibility that some bills pass without leader support.

Option B: Focuses on "members" not "leaders" - wrong scope

Option C: This is a conditional (IF leaders endorse, THEN it passes), but it doesn't help us when leaders DON'T endorse. The contrapositive would tell us if it doesn't pass, then leaders didn't all endorse - but that doesn't strengthen our prediction.

Option D: Talks about bills that passed - opposite of what we need to strengthen.

The key distinction: A directly addresses what happens when bills LACK leader support (they typically fail), making it the strongest support for the prediction.

glagad · Answer

I think B would still have been wrong (with the presence of A as an option) even if it used the word "leader" instead of "member", because it would show correlation, whereas A shows causality.

Would love to hear thoughts on this take.

The new agriculture bill will almost surely fail to pass. The leaders

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The new agriculture bill will almost surely fail to pass. The leaders

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615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

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