UNDERSTANDING POLITICAL POLLS - Case study

She sent an e-mail to her statistics professor asking the following questions:

1. What is a random sample? How would you go about collecting one? What factors (i.e., gender, region, age) must you consider when designing a sample frame?

2. The article says that 38 per cent will vote Liberal. Is this a fact or an estimate?

3. The article says the survey is accurate within 1.9 percentage points. What exactly does this mean?

4. The article says that the sample consisted of 2,638 people. Where did this number come from?

5. The article also says the results are accurate 19 times out of 20. What does this mean?