ABC News/Washington Post Poll, February 2008 (ICPSR 24605)

Version Date: Sep 1, 2009

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Principal Investigator(s):
ABC News; The Washington Post

Series:

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR24605.v1

Version V1

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Summary

This poll, fielded February 28-March 02, 2008, is part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. A national sample of 1,126 adults was surveyed, including an oversample of African Americans, for a total of 215 African American respondents. Respondents were asked whether they approved of the way George W. Bush was handling his job as president, whether the war with Iraq was worth fighting, and whether respondents thought the United States was making significant progress toward restoring civil order in Iraq. Respondents were also asked how closely they were following the 2008 presidential race, the probability that they would vote in the primary, who they wanted to see win the Democratic/Republican presidential nomination, for whom they would vote in the general election if the election were held that day, their opinion of the candidates, who they would choose as the Democratic/Republican vice presidential running mate, and who they trusted to handle various issues such as health care, the economy, the war in Iraq, immigration issues, the United States' campaign against terrorism, and ethics in government. Demographic information includes voter registration status and participation history, sex, age, race, income, marital status, religious preference, whether the respondent considered themselves to be a born-again evangelical Christian, education level, type of residential area (e.g., urban or rural), political philosophy, political party affiliation, and whether the respondent or anyone in the home was a military veteran.

Citation

ABC News, and The Washington Post. ABC News/Washington Post Poll, February 2008. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2009-09-01. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR24605.v1

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Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

2008-02

Date of Collection

2008-02-28 -- 2008-03-02

Data Collection Notes

  1. The data collection was produced by Taylor Nelson Sofres of Horsham, PA. Original reports using these data may be found via the ABC News Polling Unit Web site and via the Washington Post Opinion Surveys and Polls Web site.

  2. ICPSR created a unique sequential record identifier variable named CASEID for use with online analysis.

  3. The data available for download are not weighted and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis.

  4. Several codes in the variable CBSA contain diacritical marks.

  5. System missing values were recoded to -1.

  6. Variables FIPS and ZIP were recoded to protect respondent confidentiality.

  7. The variables PCTBLACK, PCTASIAN, PCTHISP, CONGDIST, BLOCKCNT, MSAFLAG, CSA, CBSA, METRODIV, ZIP, and NIELSMKT were converted from character to numeric.

  8. Variables MSA, CSA, CBSA, and METRODIV contain unknown codes.

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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. This poll included an oversample of African American respondents.

Universe

Persons aged 18 and over living in households with telephones in the contiguous 48 United States.

Unit(s) of Observation

individual

Data Type(s)

Mode of Data Collection

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Original Release Date

2009-09-01

Version History

2018-02-15 The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented. The previous citation was:

  • ABC News, and The Washington Post. ABC News/Washington Post Poll, February 2008. ICPSR24605-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2009-09-01. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR24605.v1

2009-09-01 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:

  • Performed consistency checks.
  • Standardized missing values.
  • Created online analysis version with question text.

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Weight

The data contain a weight variable (WEIGHT) that should be used in analyzing the data. The weights were derived using demographic information from the Census to adjust for sampling and nonsampling deviations from population values. Until 2008 ABC News used a cell-based weighting system in which respondents were classified into one of 48 or 32 cells (depending on sample size) based on their age, race, sex and education; weights were assigned so the proportion in each cell matched the Census Bureau's most recent Current Population Survey. To achieve greater consistency and reduce the chance of large weights, ABC News in 2007 tested and evaluated iterative weighting, commonly known as raking or rim weighting, in which the sample is weighted sequentially to Census targets one variable at a time, continuing until the optimum distribution across variables (again, age, race, sex and education) is achieved. ABC News adopted rim weighting in January 2008. Weights are capped at lows of 0.2 and highs of 6. The oversample of African American respondents was weighted back to their correct share of the national population.

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Notes

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