DOI: 10.3886/icpsr02901
title: ABC News Poll, November 1999
title: Archival Version

description: This poll, fielded October 28-31, 1999, is part of a
 continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on
 the presidency and a range of other political and social issues.
 Several questions were asked of respondents to gauge their feelings
 about the 2000 presidential election and the candidates Vice President
 Al Gore, Texas governor George W. Bush, Arizona senator John McCain,
 former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley, publisher Steve Forbes,
 developer Donald Trump, and conservative commentator Pat Buchanan.
 Respondents were asked whom they intended to vote for, whether they
 had favorable or unfavorable impressions of each candidate, how well
 they knew each candidate's personal qualities and stance on specific
 issues and which was the more important factor in choosing a candidate
 to support, and whether they thought the individual presidential
 hopefuls would follow the governing path laid down by Clinton or would
 forge a new path. Respondents were asked how important the following
 issues were to the 2000 presidential election and how Gore and Bush
 would handle these issues: gun control, election campaign finance
 reform, patients' rights in the health care system, holding taxes
 down, protecting the Social Security system, protecting the Medicare
 system, the national economy, crime, foreign affairs, improvement of
 education and schools, helping the middle class, encouraging high
 moral standards and values, the federal budget, protecting the
 environment, abortion, and the nuclear test ban treaty. More
 comparison questions were asked concerning Gore and Bush,
 specifically, which of the two candidates the respondent was most
 likely to vote for, how strongly they supported their choice, and if
 there was a chance that they would change their minds. Gore and Bush
 were also compared on these attributes: honest and trustworthy, high
 personal and moral standards, understands the problems of the average
 American, strong leader, new ideas, right kind of experience to be
 president, right kind of personality and temperament to be president,
 and would bring needed change to Washington. Additional topics covered
 included respondents' satisfaction with the jobs done by President
 Bill Clinton, the United States Congress, and the respondents'
 representatives in the House of Representatives. They were also asked
 if they would vote for the Democratic or Republican candidate if a
 congressional election were held today. Background information on
 respondents includes whether they voted in the 1996 presidential
 election, whom they voted for, self-placement on the
 conservative/liberal continuum, education, age, labor union
membership, Hispanic descent, race, and sex.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: ABC News Poll, November 1999
description: (1) The data are provided as an SPSS portable
 file. (2) 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, hardcopy documentation has been converted to
 machine-readable form and variables have been recoded to ensure
 respondents' anonymity. (3) The codebook is provided as a Portable
 Document Format (PDF) file. The PDF file format was developed by Adobe
 Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF reader software,
 such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy
 of the Acrobat Reader is provided through the ICPSR Website on the
Internet.