DOI: 10.3886/icpsr29044
title: Washington Post GOP Poll, November 2009
title: Archival Version

description: This special topic poll, fielded November 19-23, 2009, focuses on the opinions of a multitude of political matters including an oversample of respondents identifying themselves as Republican. Respondents were asked how satisfied they were with how the country's political system was working, how they felt about the Obama Administration policies, the policies offered by Republicans in Congress, and if the leadership of the Republican Party was taking the party in the right direction. Respondents were also asked whether Republicans should mainly work with the Democrats to try to get some Republican ideas into legislation or try to stop the Democratic agenda, whether they should try to stop the changes proposed by the Democrats for the country's health care system, and whether they should try to stop the changes proposed by the Democrats for the country's energy policy. They were queried on whether President Obama, the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party shared their views on most issues. They were asked if Republicans in Congress understood their problems, shared their personal values, and stood up for the core values of the Republican Party. Furthermore, they were queried on whether the Republican Party put too much emphasis on Second Amendment gun rights, same-sex marriage, abortion, federal spending, taxes, the environment, illegal immigration, the economy, and jobs. Opinions were sought on which Republican leader best reflected the core values of the Republican Party, whether religion should have a greater influence in politics and public life, how comfortable the respondent felt expressing their true feelings about politics, and whether most friends and family thought of themselves as Democrats, Republicans, or Independents. They were asked whether they would vote to re-elect Obama in 2012, for whom they would vote for in the Republican presidential primary, how much they blamed George W. Bush for current problems in the Republican Party, whether Sarah Palin had a good effect on the Republican Party, and whether the news media was fair to Sarah Palin. Respondents were queried on whether they thought television news was biased towards the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, and the Obama Administration. Information was collected on how often the respondents watched Fox News and MSNBC, and how often they listened to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. They were also queried on whether they thought abortion should be legal and whether they supported government bailouts for companies hit by the economic crisis. Demographic information includes age, race, sex, education level, religious preference, religiosity, party affiliation, voter participation, household income, and whether the respondent is a born-again Christian.
description: The data contain a weight variable (WEIGHT) that should be used in analyzing the data. The weights were derived using demographic information from the Census to adjust for sampling and nonsampling deviations from population values. Until 2008 ABC News used a cell-based weighting system in which respondents were classified into one of 48 or 32 cells (depending on sample size) based on their age, race, sex, and education; weights were assigned so the proportion in each cell matched the Census Bureau's most recent Current Population Survey. To achieve greater consistency and reduce the chance of large weights, ABC News in 2007 tested and evaluated iterative weighting, commonly known as raking or rim weighting, in which the sample is weighted sequentially to Census targets one variable at a time, continuing until the optimum distribution across variables (again, age, race, sex, and education) is achieved. ABC News adopted rim weighting in January 2008. Weights are capped at lows of 0.2 and highs of 6.
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: Standardized missing values.; Created online analysis version with question text.; Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS1: Dataset
description: ABC News/Washington Post Poll Series
description: computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI) 
The data available for download are not weighted and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis.
The variables PCTBLACK, PCTASIAN, PCTHISP, BLOCKCNT, MSAFLAG, CSA, CBSA, METRODIV, ZIP, STCODE, CONGDIST and NIELSMKT were converted from character to numeric.
To preserve respondent confidentiality, codes for the variables FIPS (FIPS County) and ZIP (ZIP Code) have been replaced with blank codes.
System-missing values were recoded to -1.
The CASEID variable was created for use with online analysis.
Several codes in the variable CBSA contain diacritical marks.
Value labels for unknown codes were added in variables MSA, CSA, CBSA, COLLEDUC, and METRODIV.
 The data collection was produced by Taylor Nelson Sofres of Horsham, PA. Original reports using these data may be found via the ABCNews Polling Unit Web site and via the Washington Post Opinion Surveys and Polls Web site.
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 youngest adult living in the household who was home at the time of the interview. Please refer to the codebook documentation for more information on sampling. This poll included an oversample of respondents identifying themselves as Republican.