PrepTest 123, Section 2, Question 22
By Brandon Beaver | Published October 29, 2024
Type: Most Supported
Difficulty:
Explanations
Okay, so (1) secretive local business practices and (2) poor news coverage leads to local politicians being isolated from their electorates. In turn, this reduces the chance that resident participation will cause an official response. Consequently, that discourages resident participation.
A
No, we only know that isolation causes the chance of a response to be reduced. Even without the isolation, the action could still only have a 10% chance of eliciting a response. Therefore, we can’t necessarily say that it would be “likely.”
B
The passage doesn’t make any “we should do this” claims.
C
The passage doesn’t say that it’s the most important factor. That could be one of many factors.
D
Yup, news media rarely covering local politics thoroughly was one factor (the second sentence says “these factors each”) that causes the isolation of local politicians. That isolation indirectly discourages resident participation in local politics.
E
No, this has things backwards.
Passage
Editorialist: News media rarely cover local politics thoroughly, and local political business is usually conducted secretively. These factors each tend to isolate local politicians from their electorates. This has the effect of reducing the chance that any particular act of resident participation will elicit a positive official response, which in turn discourages resident participation in local politics.
Question 22
Which one of the following is most strongly supported by the editorialist's statements?
Particular acts of resident participation would be likely to elicit a positive response from local politicians if those politicians were less isolated from their electorate.
Local political business should be conducted less secretively because this would avoid discouraging resident participation in local politics.
The most important factor influencing a resident's decision as to whether to participate in local politics is the chance that the participation will elicit a positive official response.
More-frequent thorough coverage of local politics would reduce at least one source of discouragement from resident participation in local politics.
If resident participation in local politics were not discouraged, this would cause local politicians to be less isolated from their electorate.