Total contributions by individuals to political parties were up 25 per

Official Explanation

If you wanted to determine how politically active people are, what kind of test would you devise? You might do a survey to test political awareness; you might do a survey to find out how many hours people devote to political campaigning each week or how many hours they spend writing letters, etc.; or you might get a rough estimate by studying the voting statistics. The paragraph takes contributions as a measure of political activity.

(E) is correct for two reasons. First, the paragraph says nothing about individual activity. It says total contributions were up, not average or per person contributions. Second, (E) cites voting patterns which seem as good as or better an indicator of political activity than giving money.

This second reason explains why (A) is wrong. (A) may weaken the argument, but a stronger attack would use voting patterns.

(D) confuses individual and corporate contributions, so even if campaign giving were a strong indicator of activity, (D) would still be irrelevant.

(B) does not even explain why contributions in toto rose during the four years, nor does it tell us anything about the pattern of giving by individual persons.

Finally, (C) seems the worst of all the answers, for it hardly constitutes an attack on the author’s reasoning. It seems likely that even in the face of increased political activity, public leaders would continue to warn against the dangers of political apathy.

The correct answer is (E).