The day before the 2008 US presidential election, a poll was taken of likely reg

Question

The day before the 2008 US presidential election, a poll was taken of likely registered voters. Assume that there were only two candidates running for president: Obama and his rival McCain. The poll found that 53% of the randomly selected voters polled said they will vote for candidate Obama. The margin of error was +/- 3% and the level of confidence was 95%. If our calculations are correct and there were no mistakes made in the survey, this means that candidate Obama will definitely win the election. True False

Explanation / Answer

Assume that there are 100 voters , out of which 53 said Obama , the error margin is +-3% , so this means that votes isn favor of obama can be in the range of 50 - 56. Also we are only 95% confident about the results , so it still stands a chance of 5% to be above or below this range of 50 and 56.

Also if the lower range is 50 , in that case obama will not win but the result would be a tie.

hence the chance that obama would defintely win is not a correct statement. Hence false

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