Whenever a major political scandal erupts before an election and voters blame the scandal on all parties about equall...

AneeshU June 30, 2022

What's this bit about 'political scandals being less the responsibility of individual incumbents'?

I eliminated (E) on the basis that it adds a condition that the political scandal must be more the responsibility of the party and not the incumbent. As far as I understand from the stimulus, even if a scandal is more the fault of the incumbent, it can still be blamed on the party. How come this isn't relevant?

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Emil-Kunkin July 2, 2022

Hi AneeshU,

E took me several attempts to understand what it was actually saying- and how it is relevant to the passage.

E sets out a scenario in which a scandal relates to the entire party, rather than to individual incumbents, the responsible party must be punished when possible.

Let's try to dissect the first half of this. To say that "a scandal is less about the individual incumbents than about the parties to which they belong" is to say that this is a party-wide scandal. That is, the type of scandal in question in the passage. So, while we know nothing about scandals that are caused by individual incumbents, the first half of E is giving us a conditional: if a scandal relates to a whole party (rather than just some of its members)...

The second half of E finishes this conditional: if a scandal relates to a whole party (rather than just some of its members), the responsible party should be punished when possible.

This is a good fit for the voting behavior described in the passage. Voters tend to punish incumbents whose parties were engulfed in a scandal when it is possible. That is, they vote out incumbents whose parties are involved in a scandal unless other parties are equally tainted. This idea of the other parties being also held responsible is roughly equivalent with the idea of "when possible."

While E is needlessly wordy and introduces a completely unnecessary and confusing idea (incumbents VS parties being responsible), it does ultimately seem to be a principle that would guide the actions of voters described in the passage.

AneeshU July 4, 2022

Thanks, Emil. Its good to know that you found the answer choice wordy as well.