CR: Every election year

[ginakim85]

Can somebody please explain why the answer is A, and not B? Thanks!

[ugenderr]

Hi ginakim85,

The best approach for bold-face question types is find out the conclusion and see how the bold faced statements relate to the conclusion.
In this argument, the conclusion is "This year it is likely he finally will", which again a bold-faced statement.

so you have second bold faced statement as conlusion/main point.

The first bold faced argument is evidence (it's not a claim) so see the 5 options that say second bold faced statement as conclusion or main point.

So only A and D are left.

B -- wrong for saying stmt2 is intermediate conclusion. stmt 2 is not intermediate, it is the main conclusion.

C -- wrong for saying stmt 2 is a consequence

E -- is wrong for saying stmt 2 is evidence. stmt 2 is not evidence;it's a conclusion.

So now we have A and D .

if you look at the option D, it says that stmt 1 works against statement 2;in fact, statement 1 supports statement 2 so this option is wrong.

So we left with only A.

[RonPurewal]

thanks, ugender.

to the original poster -- choice (b) is incorrect because the second boldface statement is not an intermediate conclusion.
if you say that something is an intermediate conclusion, then there must be a further conclusion to which this conclusion points. in other words, you should be able to follow up the intermediate conclusion with "therefore...", and then a further conclusion(s).

if you structure of this argument so that it contains the word "therefore" with each logical deduction, you will find that the second boldface statement is the final conclusion of the passage. in other words,
blah blah blah blah, THEREFORE it is likely that mr. bergeron will run in the election this year.