DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03126.v2
title: CBS News/New York Times Monthly Poll #2, September 2000
title: Version 2

description: This poll, fielded September 27-October 1, 2000, 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 Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman, Texas governor George W. Bush, former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, and the United States Congress. Those queried were asked whether they intended to vote in the November 7, 2000, presidential election and for whom they would vote if the election were held that day, given a choice between Gore (Democratic Party), Bush (Republican Party), conservative commentator Pat Buchanan (Reform Party), and consumer advocate Ralph Nader (Green Party). A series of questions addressed the presidential campaigns of Gore and Bush, including which candidate possessed strong leadership qualities, had the skills necessary to negotiate with Congress, had the ability to deal effectively with world leaders, cared about the needs of people like the respondent, had spent more time explaining his proposals than attacking his opposition, and shared a political orientation similar to that of the respondent. Views on the candidates' proposed policies were also elicited, including which candidate was more likely to maintain a strong economy, keep oil prices down, reduce the cost of prescription drugs for the elderly, reduce taxes, make health care affordable for everyone, preserve the privacy of the financial and medical records of the American people, strengthen the United States military, and choose Supreme Court justices whose opinions would be the closest to the respondent's on issues like abortion. Other questions focused on whether the expected federal budget surplus should be spent cutting taxes, paying down the national debt, or preserving programs like Medicare and Social Security. A series of questions addressed which political party was more likely to insure economic prosperity, improve health care, reduce taxes, improve education, and make the right decision about Social Security. Additional topics covered whether respondents intended to watch the televised presidential debate on October 3, what they expected to learn from the debate, and whether the information they obtained from the debate would influence their electoral decision. A final series of questions sought respondent views on the use of school vouchers, the state of the public school system in the country and in their community, and which level of government was responsible for improving the public school system. Background information on respondents includes age, gender, political party, political orientation, voter registration and participation history, education, labor union membership, military service, marital status, religion, race, Hispanic origin, health care coverage, age of children in household, computer and Internet access, household income, number of years living in community, and whether the respondent was financially better or worse off than eight years ago.
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: (1) 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, data files have been converted to non-platform-specific formats, and variables have been recoded to ensure respondents' anonymity. (2) The codebook is provided by ICPSR 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 on the ICPSR Web site.
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.