Passage Summary: People don't like politicians who blink a lot, and the author thinks this is bad for elections because blinking has nothing to do with being a good leader.

Conclusion: The tendency for viewers to judge frequent-blinking political candidates harshly has a negative effect on election outcomes.

Reasoning: Blinking rates are irrelevant to a politician's actual ability to govern, yet this superficial trait influences voter perception, potentially distracting from relevant qualities like knowledge and confidence.

Analysis: The author assumes that because blinking is irrelevant to job performance, its influence on voters is automatically 'deleterious.' To weaken this, we need to find a way that blinking might actually be a useful, if indirect, indicator of a candidate's fitness. Perhaps excessive blinking is a physiological sign of high stress or dishonesty, which are traits voters might reasonably want to avoid. If the 'superficial' trait actually signals a deeper problem, then the author's claim that its influence is harmful falls apart.