Studies of voting patterns in the town of Glen Isle have shown that

sayan640
How is option D a weaker

I read it as: incumbents have more power to buy up ad space than the challenger… Isn’t that in support of the argument?

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I think answer is D
If we negate D, it can't be said "the importance of television advertising inherently favors incumbents"­

In addition,
"­Studies of voting patterns in the town of Glen Isle have shown that the single most effective way for politicians to win votes is to purchase expensive television advertising. "
'expensive television advertisng'


KarishmaB would you help?­

I am confused between A and D.

I am writing what I am thinking, PLEASE CORRECT ME if I have any flaws in my thinking.

background: Studies show that only way to win is to purchase TV ad.
TV ad favors incumbents (premise) therefore it should be banned (conclusion).

(A) Incumbents have won eighty percent of the elections in Glen Isle in the last 10 years.
---- (only way to win is to purchase ad and it favors the incumbents and if they have won 80% then they must be purchasing the ad (becoz that's the single most effective way), therefore it is a premise and supports the conclusion.
---- Let's negate the statement " Incumbents have won only 10% of the elections in last 10 years, may be last election" does it destroy the conclusion? (Not sure, can someone help me here????????)

(D) Glen Isle incumbents have access to financial support in excess of that available to challengers.
----- Hence it makes the premise stronger that it favors the incumbents and it should be banned.
-----Negate the statement: If they have the same money then TV ad will not favor anyone and should not be banned.

I am more inclined towards D­

First from my understanding of assumption questions type in gmat, the concept "out of scope" does not apply. And more than often the correct answer to assumption questions are not always mentioned directly in the argument

For option A, must it be the case that incumbent has won more than 80% of the election in the last 10 years for the conclusion of the challenger to be true? How about if incumbent has won it just 50% of the time? Only option E is closest to what need to be true for that conclusion to be true.

I do not think negating option D destroy the conclusion of the argument either.

Posted from my mobile device

­
An assumption is required to be necessarily true for the conclusion to hold. 

Challenger's Premise:
the importance of television advertising inherently favors incumbents

Challenger's Conclusion: 
political television advertising should be banned in Glen Isle.

What needs to be necessarily true for the conclusion to hold?

(A) Incumbents have won eighty percent of the elections in Glen Isle in the last 10 years.

Does it need to be true for the conlcusion to hold? No. It has nothing to do with the conclusion. It only gives us further data to show that the importance of television advertising inherently favors incumbents.

(D) Glen Isle incumbents have access to financial support in excess of that available to challengers.

We do not need this to be true for the conclusion to hold. 
It gives a possible reason why "the importance of television advertising inherently favors incumbents" but does this need to be the reason? No. What if challengers have more money  but incumbents have influence such that they get priority when advertising slots are sold? So this option needn't even be the reason why the importance of television advertising inherently favors incumbents.

(E) Banning political television advertising is not unconstitutional.

Correct. When someone says, "Do A," what is the inherent assumption there? That A is not unconstitutional/illegal (we live in a civil society). Otherwise the challenger would not say so. If "A" were unconstitutional, then his conclusion would break. Then one cannot do A. 

Answer (E)­ (Let me add here, "As per me" - The OA is yet to be revealed.)

Exactly. What A does is, it slightly strengthen the conclusion and it is never an assumption that must be true for that conclusion to hold

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­
Hmm,,, it seems answer is D,,,  ­ What are your thoughts on this question?­
MartyMurray

KarishmaB I think this is a flawed question...More over not an official one..So we can just let it be...I was a bit tensed initially..Normally my CR accuracy is very high ..My gmat is days away..Hope I will be able to surpass my previous 570...

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Let's first take a look at the argument.

The conclusion is the following:

political television advertising should be banned in Glen Isle

The support for the conclusion is the following:

the importance of television advertising inherently favors incumbents

Now, here's (D):

(D) Glen Isle incumbents have access to financial support in excess of that available to challengers.

Notice that that argument does not require (D). After all, even if incumbents do NOT have access to more financial support, it could be that the importance of television advertising still somehow favors incumbents and that, therefore, political television advertising should be banned in Glen Isle.

After all, it could be television advertising favors incumbents for a reason not related to financial support.

So, (D) does not state a necessary assumption and is not a correct answer.

The answer that works best is (E), but (E) doesn't really work the way an assumption does in a GMAT CR question.

So, this question doesn't really work.­

­


Hi the OA is D, but my thought process was same as yours and chose E
So if possible can you explain why E may be wrong?