GWD1-16求解

hunterlife

GWD1-Q16:
Soaring television costs accounted for more than half the spending in the presidential campaign of 1992, a greater proportion than it was in any previous election.

A.    a greater proportion than it was
B.    a greater proportion than
C.    a greater proportion than they have been
D.    which is greater than was so
E.    which is greater than it has been

CrackingGMAC

Well，for this question, i picked A.
ans B is wrong since it compares "a great proportion" with "election"
ans C is wrong for two reasons (1)the present perfect here is unnecessary (2)" they" lacks proper antecedence.
ans D and E are wrong because the position of "which" here is somewhat ambiguous and the expression of "than was so " in choice  C is awkward. once again" have been" is not the apropos tense here,in choice D.

anyway, all the things inferred above might contain some of the wrong statement, correct me if i miss the shot.

CrackingGMAC

sorry i 'd like to correct some of my statments posted since the answer here should be  : B
http://forum.chasedream.com/GMAT_SC/thread-57841-1-1.html
i also found some of the posts discussed previously and added it here:

zhuyujun wrote: What does it refer to in A ? it doesn't stand for anything at all. the only singular nouns that precede it are "spending" and "the presidential campaign of 1992". clearly, neither of these is an appropriate antecedent, so this choice is just wrong. Quote: , and what does they refer to in C? Can we use have been in C? Please help, thanks! "they" would have to refer to "soaring television costs", by elimination: there aren't any other plural nouns. literally, this makes no sense, since television costs weren't "soaring" in OTHER elections. (note that you MUST take the pronoun to stand for "soaring television costs"; you are NOT allowed to extract just "television costs" and pretend that the pronoun stands only for that.) "have been" is an even bigger problem, though, since it implies the presence of "accounting". you can't do this unless the word "accounting" is actually present elsewhere in the sentence; it isn't. So the ans should be B then. hope it helps.

kevinsuper

the previous exams have similar expression of B... It must be wrong... still insist on A... here is how I did:

Soaring television costs accounted for more than half the spending in the presidential campaign of 1992, a greater proportion than it was in any previous election.

greater than the soaring television in any previous election... eliminate B&C; comparing acd, a is better