When an opinion poll says that "with 95 percent confidence," the margin of error for its results is plus or minus 3 percentage points, this means that:

Question

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The statement "with 95 percent confidence" indicates that the margin of error is calculated based on the assumption that 95 percent of all possible samples chosen would give results within ± 3 points of the true population value. In other words, if we were to repeat the poll many times, we would expect that 95 percent of the time the results would fall within the given margin of error. This does not guarantee the true population value is within this range, but it gives a high degree of confidence that the sample result is close to the population value.

When an Opinion Poll Says That "With 95 Percent Confidence