DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03711.v1
title: CBS News/New York Times Monthly Poll #1, November 2002
title: Version 1

description: This poll 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. Respondents were asked to give their opinions of President George W. Bush and his handling of the presidency, foreign policy, and the economy. In addition, respondents were asked to give their opinions of the current economy, and whether it was getting better or worse. Respondents were asked to rate the Democratic and Republican parties as favorable or unfavorable, to indicate whether they believed that Democrats or Republicans had clear plans for the United States and whether there were differences in what each party stood for, and to specify the most important difference between the two parties. Respondents were asked if they voted for United States House of Representatives, what issue was the most important in deciding their vote for House representatives, whether their vote for Congress was a vote for or against President Bush and his policies, whether they would vote for President Bush again in 2004, whether the Democrats should nominate Al Gore, whether they were pleased or disappointed by the outcome of the November elections, and whether it was better or worse to have a president from the same political party that controlled Congress. Respondents were asked to give their opinions on Republicans' control of Congress: whether the United States would be more secure from terrorist attacks, whether the economy would improve, whether taxes would increase or decrease, whether the respondents' families' financial situations would improve, whether big business would have more influence in Washington, whether federal courts would be more conservative, how likely war in Iraq was a result of Republican control in Congress, and whether environmental problems would improve. Respondents were asked how much they believed President Bush cared about their needs and problems and those of Blacks, whether they had confidence in President Bush to deal with an international crisis and the economy, whether his political views were liberal, moderate, or conservative, and whether the religious right had too much or too little influence on the Bush administration. Respondents were asked to give their opinions on tax issues, particularly on: whether the tax cuts were a good idea, whether the tax cuts made a difference in the amount of money retained after taxes, whether they believed the government could reduce the federal budget deficit while cutting taxes, whether they preferred a tax cut or reduced deficit, the effect of the tax cuts on the economy, who benefited most from the tax cuts, whether the tax cuts should be made permanent, and whether using the budget surplus to cut taxes was the best thing to do. Opinions were elicited regarding the environment: whether the federal government was doing enough regulating environmental and safety practices of business, whether requirements and standards can be set too high, whether or not the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska should be approved for oil drilling, whether producing energy or protecting the environment was more important, and what President Bush believed was more important. Respondents were asked whether Social Security would have money available upon their retirement, whether allowing individuals to invest their Social Security taxes on their own was a good idea, and whether the government should make up any losses incurred. On the subject of courts, respondents were asked whether newly court-appointed judges should be reviewed and confirmed by Congress, whether Congress should review and approve judges appointed by President Bush, and whether President Bush's nominees would be more conservative than tolerable. Regarding estate taxes, respondents were asked if they believed that there should be an estate tax for thelargest estates or no estate tax whatsoever, and whether they approved of President Bush's or the Democrats' proposal on estate taxes. Respondents were asked to give opinions on terrorism: whether the Bush administration had a clear plan, whether the government would fail to enact strong anti-terrorism laws or the new anti-terrorism laws would excessively restrict the average person's civil liberties, whether they were willing to allow government agencies to monitor phone calls and emails, and whether the federal government should be allowed to use wiretaps. Other questions focused on whether respondents approved of taking action in Iraq, whether military action would take place in Iraq, whether military action should take place if United States lives could be lost, what the effect on the United States economy would be if the war lasted for months or years, whether terrorism would increase or decrease, whether Saddam Hussein would allow United Nations inspectors full access to search for weapons of mass destruction, whether the United States should bomb Iraqi targets if Saddam Hussein did not allow weapons inspectors in, how likely another terrorist attack was within the next few months, how concerned they were over terrorist attacks in local areas, how confident they were in the United States government to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, whether the war in Afghanistan could be considered a success if bin Laden was not captured or killed, whether bin Laden was still alive, and who was winning the war on terrorism. Respondents were then asked a variety of questions concerning voting behavior: if they had registered to vote, if they voted in the 2000 election, party affiliation, and views on political matters. Background information elicited on respondents includes whether or not they owned a firearm, marital status, religion, education, age, Hispanic descent, race, how long they had lived in their present community, income, and additional phone lines.
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' privacy.
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).