ABC News/Washington Post Poll #1, April 2006 (ICPSR 4659)
Version Date: Nov 19, 2007 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
ABC News;
The Washington Post
Series:
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR04659.v1
Version V1
Summary View help for Summary
This poll, conducted April 6-9, 2006, is part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the current presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. A national sample of 1,229 adults was surveyed, including an oversample of 27 Black respondents and 202 respondents aged 65 and older. Part 1 contains data on non-oversample respondents and Black oversample respondents, while Part 2 contains information asked only of respondents aged 65 and older, including the aged 65 and older oversample. Respondents were queried on whether they approved of the way President George W. Bush was handling the presidency, and issues such as the economy and the campaign against terrorism. Respondents were also asked whether they approved of the way the United States Congress and their own representatives were handling their jobs, whether they would vote for a Democratic or Republican candidate in the upcoming United States House of Representatives election, the importance of issues such as health care in their voting choice, and which party they trusted to handle the main problems the nation would face over the next few years. Views were also sought on the war in Iraq, whether United States military forces in Iraq should be withdrawn, and whether Iraq was currently in a state of civil war. A series of questions asked how much respondents knew about the new Medicare prescription drug program, whether they approved of it, and who was responsible for its creation. Respondents aged 65 and older were asked whether they took prescription drugs, whether they had signed up for the new Medicare prescription drug program, whether it saved them money, and whether the enrollment deadline should be extended. Other topics addressed the recent increase in gasoline prices, illegal immigration, government waste, a new Massachusetts law requiring all residents to have health insurance, and whether Congress should officially reprimand or impeach President Bush for authorizing wiretaps on suspected terrorists without court approval. Demographic variables include sex, age, race, household income, marital status, education level, political party affiliation, political philosophy, voter registration status, religious preference, whether respondents considered themselves born-again or evangelical Christians, and whether they and their parents were born in the United States.
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Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes
- (1) The data available for download are not weighted and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis. (2) Original reports using these data may be found via the ABC News Polling Unit Web site and Washington Post Opinion Surveys and Polls Web site. (3) This poll includes an oversample of 27 Black respondents and 202 respondents aged 65 and older, as identified in the SAMPTYPE variable. Black respondents were asked all questions, whereas respondents in the aged 65 and older oversample were limited to demographic questions and questions corresponding to variables Q22 through Q37. The data collection instrument also indicates which questions were asked of oversample respondents. (4) Respondents aged 65 and older in part 1 also appear in part 2 and can be matched using the RESPNO variable. (5) System-missing values were recoded to -1. (6) The FIPS and ZIP variables were recoded for confidentiality. (7) According to the data collection instrument, code 3 in the variable Q909 also included respondents who answered that they had attended a technical school. (8) The variables PCTBLACK, PCTASIAN, PCTHISP, CONGDIST, and BLOCKCNT were converted from character variables to numeric. (9) Several codes in the variable CBSA contain diacritical marks. (10) Value labels for unknown/missing codes were added in the MSA, METRODIV, CSA, and SAMPTYPE variables. (11) The CASEID variable was created for use with online analysis.
Sample View help for Sample
Households were selected by random-digit dialing. Within households, the respondent selected was the adult living in the household who last had a birthday and who was home at the time of the interview. Black respondents and respondents aged 65 and older were oversampled.
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Persons aged 18 and over living in households with telephones in the contiguous 48 United States.
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2007-11-19
Version History View help for Version History
- ABC News/The Washington Post. ABC NEWS/WASHINGTON POST POLL #1, APRIL 2006. ICPSR04659-v1. Horsham, PA: Taylor Nelson Sofres Intersearch [producer], 2006. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2007-11-19. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR04659.v1
2007-11-19 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:
- Created online analysis version with question text.
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The data contain weight variables that should be applied prior to performing any analysis. The weight variable WEIGHT should be used when analyzing the data in part 1, while the weight variable SENWGT should be applied when analyzing the data in part 2. The variable WEIGHT was derived using demographic information from the Census to adjust for sampling and nonsampling deviations from population values. Respondents customarily were classified into one of 48 cells based on age, race, sex, and education. Weights were assigned so the proportion in each of these 48 cells matched the actual population proportion according to the Census Bureau's most recent Current Population Survey. The weight variable SENWGT was derived using the sex, race and education of the aged 65 and older population.
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