How will the right answer fit in terms of support and conclusion?

Only the right answer will be a conclusion supported by the passage. A “generalization” could be support, but “illustrates” always maps to “supports”. So the passage will be the support, and the right answer will be the conclusion.

Highlight the main conclusion in the passage, if there is one:

Nothing in the passage gets supported by anything else. The only conclusion will be in the right answer.

[SUPPORT]. [BACKGROUND]; [SUPPORT].

So the wording there really changes from the first piece of support at the beginning to the other piece of support at the end. The author changed the subject from “more often blame politicians than…” to “have more power over politicians than…” The right answer will connect those two different ideas together.

Map the wording of the answers to the wording of the passage:

(A) …the people who have the most power…

…are never mentioned. Don’t assume that means “politicians”. That’s a little beyond what you’d call common sense. And you never add in your own reasoning.

(B) …to ascribe more power…

The passage doesn’t say anything about giving anybody power, which is what “ascribe” is synonymous with here.

(C) …the extent that a person is well known…

…is never mentioned in the passage. It may have sounded okay but it doesn’t map to the wording of the passage at all.

(D) …usually not held sufficiently responsible…

The whole passage is pretty theoretical, it doesn’t get into specifics or numbers at all, so we have no support for what “usually” happens.

(E) …more inclined to blame…someone over whom they feel they have power.

This connects the wording of the two statements in the passage quite nicely.

(E) is the correct answer.

Common pattern/s in this question: This whole thing is wordy and annoying, I think you’ll agree. If you want to lighten the lift and be done quicker, train to recognize when the author changes the subject. It usually happens with new wording in the conclusion, but here we saw a good example that they can do it with two statements of support too.