DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03984.v1
title: CBS News/New York Times Monthly Poll #2, December 2003
title: Version 1

description: This poll, conducted December 10-14 and 16, 2003, is part of a continuing series of monthly polls that solicit opinions on political and social issues. Views were sought on the 2004 presidential campaign and the war with Iraq, as well as President George W. Bush and his handling of the presidency, foreign policy, and the economy. Respondents were asked whether the country was going in the right or wrong direction, whether President Bush legitimately won the 2000 presidential election, whether it was acceptable to publicly criticize him on terrorism issues, whether his tax cuts were good or bad for the economy, and the condition of the national economy. A series of questions asked whether the result of the war with Iraq and the removal of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was worth the human and economic costs, whether Iraq was an immediate threat to the United States, how well the United States was doing to bring stability and order to Iraq, how long troops should remain there, and whether the United States won the war with Iraq. Several questions asked about the effects of Saddam Hussein's capture on attacks against United States troops in Iraq and threats of terrorism against the United States, whether the United States could win the war in Afghanistan without the capture or death of Osama bin Laden, and who was winning the war on terrorism. Questions were posed regarding the progress made by the Bush administration in reducing the cost of prescription drugs for the elderly, whether it had a clear plan for rebuilding Iraq and the campaign against terrorism, whether it was too quick or too slow in getting the United States involved in a war with Iraq, and whether the administration told everything it knew about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq prior to the war. Respondents were also polled on how much attention they paid to the 2004 presidential campaign, whether they would vote for President George W. Bush or a Democratic candidate for president, how certain they were about their choice, which one issue candidates should discuss, whether candidates should support or oppose the war in Iraq and gay marriage, and whether candidates should have political experience inside or outside of Washington. Opinions were solicited on former Vice-President Al Gore, the Democratic presidential nominees (Carol Moseley-Braun, Wesley Clark, Howard Dean, John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, John Kerry, Dennis Kucinich, Joe Lieberman, Al Sharpton), and the effect of Al Gore's endorsement of Howard Dean for president. Respondents were polled on whether the Democratic or Republican party would do a better job of ensuring a strong economy, dealing with terrorism, creating new jobs, and rebuilding Iraq, and whether political leaders from middle class backgrounds did a better job representing the middle class than those from wealthy backgrounds. Views were sought on whether homosexuality was immoral, whether it was a choice, whether homosexual couples should be able to form legal civil unions and marry, and whether marriage was mostly a legal or religious matter. Additional topics addressed the use of steroids in professional sports, the recently passed Medicare bill, whether the government should promote traditional values, the public viewing of caskets of soldiers killed in Iraq, and whether President Bush should have attended the funerals of military personnel. Background variables include sex, age, ethnicity, income, marital status, education, religion, religiosity, number of phone lines in household, date of interview, political orientation, political party affiliation, and voter registration and participation history.
description: 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 variable labels and/or value labels..
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS1: Dataset
description: CBS News/New York Times Poll Series
description: This collection has not been processed by ICPSR staff. ICPSR is distributing the data and documentation for this collection in essentially the same form in which they were received. When appropriate, documentation has been converted to Portable Document Format (PDF), data files have been converted to non-platform-specific formats, and variables have been recoded to ensure respondents' anonymity.
The ASCII data file may have been replaced if the previous version was formatted with multiple records per case. A frequency file, which contains the authoritative column locations, has been added to the collection.
description: Adult population of the United States aged 18 and over having a telephone at home.
description: A variation of random-digit dialing using primary sampling units (PSUs) was employed, consisting of blocks of 100 telephone numbers identical through the eighth digit and stratified by geographic region, area code, and size of place. Within households, respondents were selected using a method developed by Leslie Kish and modified by Charles Backstrom and Gerald Hursh (see Backstrom and Hursh, SURVEY RESEARCH. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1963).