Ans: C (IMO)

I am confused between C & D and going with C. I think C is more up to the mark here.
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I think the answer should be B
A: Even if the voters are well informed or not, it doesn't culminate to actual votes. There may be other factors affecting the judgment of the voters.
B: If those who support subsidies are more likely to vote than are those who oppose subsidies, then the politician opposing the subsidies will lose. Hence the negation of argument weakens the conclusion. Therefore, it may be the solution.
C: Directly or indirectly is not the crust of the argument. Hence it can be eliminated. Again this option is bit extreme.
D: Very close. IF B is incorrect then D is definitely the answer. The problem is that the tone is extreme because it speaks about only one strategy and ignores the others that may exist
E: clearly out of scope.

Hey Bunuel,

But isn't C out of scope? What relation does motivation has with voting for candidates? For instance:- X is motivated but does it guarantee that X is going to cast his vote?

Imo b is correct.
Although c also has no issue to be answer but it is more general than specific to subject imo.

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Great options! Very subtle and tricky as hell.


What if people who oppose such subsidies are not eligible to vote and those who favor the subsidies are the only eligible voters?
So even if the candidate opposes the subsidies, he will not get any vote. He will not win in that case.
B eliminates such cases and hence, is required to be assumed.

--B--

For the C- contenders, consider the negated version:

Voters are not solely motivated by the way that policies directly impact themselves personally.
Fine, the voters are also motivated by economic impacts. What if voters are 2% motivated by economic impacts and 98% motivated by personal impacts? The conclusion still holds , when we are expecting it to fall apart on negation of this option.
C is weakened by the word 'ONLY' here.
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VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL SOLUTION:

As you assess the argument here looking for gaps in logic, you should see that the main premise in the argument is "in polling, most people find subsidies unfavorable" and the conclusion is that "politicians would therefore be more likely to win if they oppose subsidies." This leaves a pretty large gap: does seeing this one issue as unfavorable mean that most people would actually go and vote for a candidate who opposes that issue?

Anticipate some possible weaknesses in that logic:

-maybe it's an issue most people don't care about very much so it's not a good indicator of how they'll vote

-maybe the people who support subsidies passionately support them and will be sure to vote while those opposed are more apathetic and probably won't vote

However you look at it, recognize that the gap exists between how this particular issue polls and how that will impact votes.

For this reason, choice (B) is correct. If you hold it up to the Assumption Negation Technique, you get: those who support the subsidies are significantly more likely to vote." If this were true, that would cripple the given argument - the only evidence the argument has is that "most people find subsidies unfavorable" but if polling is not a good indication of who will go and vote, that premise loses its predictive power. As anticipated above, (B) suggests a direct impediment between "polling" and "voting."

Among the incorrect answer choices, (C) and (E) are wrong for essentially the same reason: they each suggest reasons that people might actually prefer the subsidies (in (C) it's "what if they themselves don't benefit but they like what the subsidies do for their neighbors" and in (E) it's "maybe the subsidies actually do benefit most people, after all, if you let them play out"). But in each case the rebuttal is "but the polls already say that they're against subsidies." We have hard evidence in the stimulus that those considerations don't matter: people are against them.

(A) can be rebutted the same way. Even if people aren't well-informed about the issues, they've indicated that they're against the issue (and in real life, who hasn't met someone who's poorly-informed but heavily convicted about an issue?).

Choice (D) is there as a trap for those who tend to hijack the conclusion. Remember: the conclusion only talks about the probability (politicians would be more likely to win) and not what politicians ought to do. Choice (D) deals with what politicians should or shouldn't do, but that doesn't impact the specific conclusion at all, so (D) is incorrect.
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you are trying too hard to make your point... It seems as if you dont want the answer to be B.
nevertheless, ill try my best to explain you..

When governments subsidize certain industries, the business owners and employees of those industries benefit but the majority of consumers pay more for those products and find that there are fewer of their tax dollars available for policies they prefer. Unsurprisingly, polling indicates that most people see industry-specific subsidies as unfavorable. Consequently, political candidates would increase their likelihood of being elected if they oppose such subsidies.

understand :
fact : subsidy - benefit business owners and emps - hurt consumers ...why ?? because what consumers prefer dont get enough share of the revenue.
fact - polling results - industry specific subsidies unfavourable -
Conclusion - politician (WHO WANTS TO INCREASE HIS LIKELIHOOD OF BEING ELECTED - HE IS NOT YET ELECTED ...HE WANTS TO GET ELECTED ) should appose industry sppecific subsidy.

now why does author suggest the politician that?? certainly he must conclsude this by reckoning something from the polling stats ..
author assumes - 1) the polling data is representative of the entire population ..
2) note that this is just a poll and not actual election ..so there is still chance that the people who find X unfavourable they might still vote FOR SOMEONE ELSE... so author assumes that the ppl will not cahnge their poll view

The argument above assumes which of the following?


A. Most voters are well-informed about their elected representatives’ positions on subsidies.-
if you would have presneted your reasoning for A , it would have been easier to explain with respect to your reasoning...
read carefully , most voter are well informed about their ELECTED (already elected ... this is totally different case... they are already ELECTED...past tense..elections are done...)
lets negate A - ,most voter are not well informed about their elected represnetatives positions on subsidies !! so this might imply that ppl either knew about the positions of elected before elections or AFTER elections... so this does not break conclusion
even if we consider ppl knew before the elections , there is still possibilty that the past trend may not hold ...ppl in our case may or may not know the positions...

B. Those who support subsidies are not significantly more likely to vote than are those who oppose subsidies
- I'll use your analogy
if you take numbers in this case there willbe many cases
for eg : population of supporters is less
population of supporters is more
population of supporters is equal
what about the population who have no stand !!!
and many more..

the conclusion wants us to increase the LIKELYHOOD ... author never says HE WILL GET ELECTED.... so B is true

Hi Gladiator59 I eliminated B in this one as I thought :

let say supporting is 60% more likely to vote than opposing grp and their proportion in population is only 10% ( as mentioned in the stem that ' polling indicates most ppl oppose subsidies') and opposing group is 40% likely to vote

The conclusion still stands dont it ?


Please guide.


Regards

Hi, thank you for responding.
I cannot still grasp the quant factor that I have illsutrated above. By a reread and after POE I got to B as well. Yet, I am not very confident with the quant part of B.

The problem with B is that if we negate it, it just weakens the argument (as others have pointed out.). But, we need to remember what assumption really is. It is required for the argument to hold true. So, if we negate an assumption, it should destroy the argument and not merely weaken it.