Question: (30 points total; 10 points each part)

A recent story (http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/03/more-americans-sympathize-with-israel-dont-want-u-s-to-lead-peace-talks/), "More Americans Sympathize with Israel, Don’t Want U.S. to Lead Peace Talks," by Greg Holyk, summarized the results of a recent survey. A pdf with full results, charts, and tables is available at: http://www.langerresearch.com/uploads/1147a7IsraelandthePalestinians.pdf

The story reads in part:

Fifty-five percent in this ABC News/Washington Post poll sympathize more with Israel, vs. 9 percent who side more with the Palestinian Authority, with the rest favoring neither, or undecided. It’s been a similar gap for many years, including polling back to the 1980s testing Israel vs. the Arab nations of the Middle East.

Support for Israel also is broad – more than seven in 10 – among Republicans and conservatives alike. This drops to roughly five in 10 moderates, independents and Democrats, and to just 39 percent of liberals, with more saying they favor neither side, compared with Republicans and conservatives.

METHODOLOGY – This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by telephone March 7-10, 2013, among a random national sample of 1,001 adults, including landline and cell-phone-only respondents. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 points, including design effect. Partisan divisions are 33-25-35 percent, Democrats-Republicans- I ndependents.

[The pdf document also reports the following results:

Sympathize more with Israel: All 55%, Democrats 49 %, Republicans 73 %, Independents 51%

Sympathize more with the Palestinian Authority: All 9%, Democrats 11%, Republicans 4%, Independents 10%

Sympathize with neither: All 14%, Democrats 16%, Republicans 9%, Independents 16%]

1. Construct 95% confidence intervals for the percent of all respondents who sympathize more with Israel, the percent of Democrats who sympathize more with Israel, the percent of Republicans who sympathize more with Israel, and the percent of Independents who sympathize more with Israel. Show all your calculations. What assumptions are necessary for these results to be valid?
2. Conduct an appropriate statistical test to see whether there is any difference in the percent of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents who sympathize more with the Palestinian Authority. Explain what null and alternative hypotheses you used, how the value of the test statistic was calculated, and how you interpret the result of your hypothesis test.
3. Using available information, check to see if the reported margin of sampling error of 3.5 percentage points for all respondents is correct. Also, calculate the margin of sampling error for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. Show all necessary calculations and explain what you conclude from these findings. In constructing your answer, feel free to use the information available at http://abcnews.go.com/PollingUnit/story?id=5984818&page=1#.UU9KJzdTk2g, which is the explanation of sampling error provided by ABC News.

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Deliverable: Word Document