Suppose a special interest group in a state is promoting an amendment to the state constitution so that residents can legally consume marijuana for medical and recreational use. They declare that voters in the state are strongly in support of the legalization of marijuana. This declaration is based on data collected in a sample survey. The group used the white pages of telephone directories of the three largest metropolitan areas in the state and randomly selected residential phone numbers to call in each city. They made calls until they had 500 responses per area. The relevant population of interest is:

The random sample utilized involves a random subset of citizens from each of the 3 largest cities in the state. The larger group which consists of all set of observation from which the smaller sample used in the survey was chosen is called the population.

Hence, the relevant population may be said to encompass all citizens of the state who have attained voting age and are registered, hence, all citizens in the state who are registered voters.