Riverdale's Modern Party Chairperson: Maples, the Modern Party candidate, would be a better mayor than his opponent, ...

AndreaK on December 21, 2019

Hi @Lucas,

The answer is E. Let’s take a deep dive into why.

This question stem, “each of the following could be true except,” can be thought of as must be false. Because the right answer is the only one that can’t be true, it’s a must be false.

So, we want to look for something that directly contradicts the logic in the stimulus. The wrong answers here will all be at least possible based on the limited information we have (not necessarily true, but they could be true meaning we lack evidence to conclude they are not true) and the right answer will be the only one that definitely can’t be true based on the logic that was presented to us in the stimulus.

The premises tell us that Maples (Modern Party) will be a better mayor than Tannett (Traditionalist). Why? Because “Every member of the Modern Party is better qualified to be mayor than is any member of the Traditionalist Party.”

We can diagram that! “Every” here is a sufficient condition indicator.

If you’re a member of the MP —> better qualified to be mayor than any member of the TP

Using that logic, let’s take a look at answer choice E.

E) Tannett is better qualified to be mayor than is Riverdale’s Modern Party Chairperson

Using that logic, we know E is impossible. Since Riverdale’s Modern Party chairperson is a member of the MP, based on the conditional logic in the stimulus, we know he must be better qualified to be mayor than Tannett because Tannet is a member of the traditionalist party. So, we know E must be false, and that’s our answer!