A local TV station conduced a "Pulse-Poll" about the upcoming mayoral election. Evening news viewers were invited to text in their votes, with the results being announced on the late-night news. Based on the texts, the station predicted that the current mayor would win the election with 52% of the vote. They were wrong and the mayor lost, getting only 46% of the vote. Do you think the station's faulty prediction is more likely to be a result of bias or sampling error? Explain. Choose the correct answer below.
A. The station's faulty prediction is a result of sampling error. The sampling method suggests that that the samples should be representative of the voters and the method is performed properly. Thus, the sample-to-sample differences can be attributed to sampling variability.
B. The station's faulty prediction is a result of sampling error. The description of the sampling method suggests that samples should be representative of the viewers of the TV station. However, not every viewer will text in their vote for the mayoral election.
C. The station's faulty prediction is a result of bias. The TV station could select which votes to count when predicting the winner of the mayoral election, which would skew the projected results from the real results.
D. The station's faulty prediction is a result of bias. Only people watching the news will respond, and their preference may differ from that of other voters. The sampling method may systematically produce samples that do not represent the population of interest.