DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03564.v1
title: ABC News/Washington Post Poll, July 2002
title: Version 1

description: This poll, conducted July 11-15, 2002, is part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on a range of political and social issues. Respondents gave their opinions of President George W. Bush and his handling of the presidency and issues such as the economy, foreign affairs, health care, education, the environment, and Social Security. Questions were posed regarding the honesty of corporate executives, whether large corporations could be trusted to account for their financial condition, whether there should be new laws regulating accounting practices and stricter penalties for corporate financial crime, and which factors contributed to recent corporate accounting scandals. Respondents were asked about the condition of the national economy, whether their financial situation was better or worse than two years ago, whether they or a family member lost their job in the previous six months, how confident they were that they would have sufficient retirement savings, and whether they had retirement savings other than Social Security. Several questions asked respondents whether they had money invested in individual stocks or mutual funds, how concerned they were about the recent drop in the stock market, whether they felt that the stock market was a safe or risky investment, and whether it should have more or less government regulation. Opinions were solicited on whether President Bush and the United States Congress cared more about protecting the interests of ordinary working people or large business corporations, whether it was better or worse for the country if the President belonged to the same party that controlled Congress, and whether the Democratic or Republican party could be better trusted to handle issues such as national defense, the federal budget, and the campaign against terrorism. Respondents were asked if they approved of the way the United States Congress and their own representative was handling their jobs, how closely they were following the upcoming congressional election, the likelihood that they would vote, whether they would vote for the Democratic or Republican candidate, which factors were most important in their vote, and whom they would vote for in their state's 2004 presidential primary or caucus if the choice of candidates included Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Senator Joseph Lieberman, House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, former Vice President Al Gore, Senator John Kerry, Senator John Edwards, and Governor Howard Dean. Respondents were also asked whether their state was facing budget problems, the seriousness of the problem, and the degree to which their state governor, state legislature, the United States Congress, President Bush, and overall economic conditions were responsible. Other topics addressed respondents' level of confidence in the United States government to prevent future terrorist attacks, how worried they were about the possibility of more major terrorist attacks in the United States, and the success of the United States campaign against terrorism. Background variables include age, sex, ethnicity, household income, religion, education, employment status, subjective size of community, labor union membership, political orientation, political party affiliation, and voter registration and participation history.
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS1: Dataset
description: ABC News/Washington Post Poll Series
description: Additional information about sampling, interviewing, weighting, and sampling error may be found in the codebook.
The data are provided as an SPSS portable file.
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.
Produced by Taylor Nelson Sofres Intersearch, Horsham, PA, 2002.
description: Persons aged 18 and over living in households with telephones in the contiguous 48 United States.
description: 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.