DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03985.v3
title: CBS News Monthly Poll #3, December 2003
title: Version 3

description: This poll, conducted December 21-22, 2003, is part of a
continuing series of monthly polls that solicit public opinion on
political and social issues. Views were gathered on the 2004
presidential campaign, as well as President George W. Bush and his
handling of the presidency, foreign policy, and the economy.
Respondents were asked whether they considered the war with Iraq to be
part of the war on terrorism, whether the United States had completed
its main mission in Iraq, whether taking military action was the right
decision, how well the United States was doing in bringing stability
and order to Iraq, and whether the United States won the war in
Iraq. Opinions were solicited on whether removing Iraqi leader Saddam
Hussein from power and the result of the war were worth the human and
economic costs, whether most Iraqis were grateful for the removal of
Saddam Hussein or resentful of the United States occupation in Iraq,
whether the United States should focus on finding Osama bin Laden and
Al Qaeda members or dealing with Saddam Hussein and Iraq, and how big
of a threat Iraq and Saddam Hussein were to the United States. A
series of questions addressed the effect of Saddam Hussein's capture
on the number of attacks on United States troops in Iraq and the
threat of terrorism against the United States, and whether he should
be tried by a United States military court, an Iraqi court, or an
international court. Respondents were asked whether Iraq would become
a stable democracy, whether this would make the United States safer or
less safe from terrorism, the effect of Libyan leader Muammar
Qaddafi's surrender of weapons of mass destruction on the threat of
terrorism against the United States, and whether the United States
government had information before September 11, 2001, that could have
prevented the terrorist attacks. Questions involving the 2004
presidential campaign polled respondents on how much attention they
paid to it, whether they would vote for President Bush or a Democratic
candidate for president, whom the Democratic party should nominate
(Wesley Clark, Howard Dean, John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, John Kerry,
Dennis Kucinich, Joe Lieberman, Carol Moseley-Braun, or Al Sharpton),
and whether this candidate should support or oppose the war in
Iraq. Respondents were asked how certain they were about their choice
of presidential candidate, the likelihood that they would vote in an
upcoming primary or caucus, whether they felt that the country was
going in the right or wrong direction, and which issue the candidates
should discuss. Respondents were also queried on whether they
accessed the Internet, whether they used the Internet to gather
information on the upcoming 2004 presidential election, and whether
they felt that the Internet changed the way political campaigns were
conducted. Additional questions asked about the condition of the
national economy, whether respondents planned to spend more or less
money in the upcoming holiday season than they did in previous years,
and if they had finished their holiday shopping. Background variables
include sex, age, ethnicity, income, marital status, education,
religion, number of telephone lines in home, political party
affiliation, political orientation, whether the respondent voted in
the 2000 presidential election, and if so, for whom (Democrat Al Gore,
Republican George W. Bush, or Green Party candidate Ralph Nader).
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).
description: Datasets: 
DS1: CBS News Monthly Poll #3, December 2003
description: Adult population of the United States aged 18 and over
having a telephone at home.
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, documentation has been converted to Portable
Document Format (PDF), data files have been converted to
nonplatform-specific formats, and variables have been recoded to
ensure respondents' anonymity.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.