Statistics: null hypothesis & alternative hypothesis?

I'm having trouble with understanding null %26amp; alternative hypothesis. Here is the question:





A poll of 1,068 adult Americans reveal that 48.0% of the voters surveyed prefer the Democratic candidate for the presidency. At the 0.05 level of significance, test the claim that at least half of all voters prefer the Democrat.





A) Put the claim in symbolic form. Does the claim include equality?





B) State the null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis.|||Null: p%26lt;.50, Alternate: p%26gt;.50 (this should be a "p is greater OR EQUAL to .5)





The claim is the alternate hypothesis. If it involves an inequality, the equal sign will always go with the alternate. In other words, once you figure out the equations, you will automatically know which one is the alternate, because it will have two signs (in this case, a 'greater than' sign and an 'equal' sign).