DOI: 10.3886/icpsr04663.v1
title: ABC News/Washington Post Poll #1, August 2006
title: Version 1

description: This poll, conducted August 3-6, 2006, is part of a
continuing series of monthly polls that solicit public opinion on the
presidency and on a range of other political and social issues.
Respondents were asked whether they approved of the way President
George W. Bush was handling the presidency and issues such as the
situation in Iraq and the economy. Those registered to vote were asked
how closely they were following the upcoming congressional elections
in November, whether they would vote for a Democrat or Republican
candidate for the United States House of Representatives if the
election were held that day, and which issue was most important in
their vote. All respondents were polled on which political party they
trusted to handle issues such as the United States campaign against
terrorism, which party was more concerned with the needs of people
like themselves, whether they approved of the way the United States
Congress was handling its job, and whether the Democrats were offering
a clear direction that was different from that of the Republicans.
Views were also sought on the war in Iraq, whether Iraq was in a state
of civil war, and whether the Bush Administration and the Democrats in
the United States Congress had a clear plan for handling the
situation. A series of questions regarding the conflict between Israel
and Hezbollah in Lebanon asked which group was to more to blame,
whether Israel was justified in bombing Hezbollah targets in civilian
areas, whether Israel should agree to an immediate, unconditional
cease-fire in Lebanon, whether the conflict would make Israel more
secure from attacks, and whether it would help or hurt the situation
for the United States in Iraq. Demographic variables include sex, age,
race, education level, household income, political party affiliation,
political philosophy, voter registration status, religious preference,
and whether respondents considered themselves born-again or
evangelical Christians.
description: The data contain a weight variable (WEIGHT) that should be
 used in analyzing the data. The data were weighted using demographic
 information from the Census to adjust for sampling and non-sampling
 deviations from population values. Respondents customarily were
 classified into one of 48 cells based on age, race, sex, and
 education. Weights were assigned so the proportion in each of these 48
 cells matched the actual population proportion according to the Census
Bureau's most recent Current Population Survey.
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.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: ABC News/Washington Post Poll #1, August 2006
description: Persons aged 18 and over living in households with
telephones in the contiguous 48 United States.
description: telephone interviewThe data available for download are not weighted
and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis.Original
reports using these data may be found via the
ABC News Polling Unit
Web site and via the
Washington
Post Opinion Surveys and Polls Web site.System missing values
were recoded to -1.FIPS and ZIP variables were recoded for
confidentiality.The variables PCTBLACK, PCTASIAN, PCTHISP,
CONGDIST, BLOCKCNT, MSAFLAG, STCODE, CSA, CBSA, METRODIV, ZIP, and
NIELSMKT were converted from character to numeric.According to
the data collection instrument, code 3 in the variable Q909 also
included respondents who answered that they had attended a technical
school.Value labels for unknown codes were added in the CSA,
METRODIV, and MSA variables.Several codes in the variable CBSA
contain diacritical marks.The CASEID variable was created for use
with online analysis.