A political pollster conducted a study to determine political party loyalty. To do so, he selected a random sample of 100 registered Democrats and a random sample of 100 registered Republicans. He determined the proportion of Democrats who plan to vote for the Democratic candidate in the upcoming election and the proportion of Republicans who plan to vote for the Republican candidate in the upcoming election. A test of significance was conducted on the following hypotheses.

H0: pD = pR

Ha: pD pR

where pD = the proportion of Democrats who plan to vote for the Democratic candidate in the upcoming election and pR = the proportion of Republicans who plan to vote for the Republican candidate in the upcoming election. The conditions for inference were met

This test resulted in a P-value of 0.0981

(a) Interpret this P-value in the context of this study.

(b) Using a significance level of = 0.05, what conclusion should be made?

(c) Based upon your conclusion in part (b), what type of error (Type I error or Type II error) could have been made? Provide one potential consequence of this error.