Question

Suppose a recent election exit pollster reports that "Forty-eight percent of the voters polled said they voted for Candidate A. The margin of error for this survey is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points." Assume the exit poll was designed and conducted correctly. What can be concluded about Candidate A?

Answer 1

If the poll indicating Candidate A received 48% of the vote has a margin of error of ±2.5%, then the potential vote percentage for Candidate A is likely between 45.5% and 50.5% of the total population.

Step-by-step explanation:

When an election exit poll reports that "Forty-eight percent of the voters polled said they voted for Candidate A" with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, we can conclude that if the poll was conducted properly, the true proportion of the entire voting population that voted for Candidate A is likely to be between 45.5% and 50.5%.

This range is calculated by subtracting 2.5% from 48% and adding 2.5% to 48%. A lower margin of error indicates a more reliable prediction of the actual vote percentage. Larger margins of error make it harder to pinpoint the exact support a candidate has. The margin of error reflects the maximum amount by which the sample results are expected to differ from the actual population value due to sampling variability, assuming a confidence level of typically 95%.