DOI: 10.3886/icpsr02164.v1
title: Washington Post 1996 Politics Poll, Wave 1, September 1996
title: Version 1

description: This special topic poll, conducted September 20-26, 1996, is part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the presidency and on a range of political and social issues. The focus of this data collection was on the upcoming 1996 presidential and congressional elections. Those queried were asked about the likelihood that they would vote, for whom they would vote if the election were held that day, when they decided on their candidate, whether they had learned enough about the candidates to make an informed choice, and whether factors such as leadership and a candidate's stance on issues were major or minor reasons for their vote. Respondents were quizzed on their knowledge of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates, party platforms, campaign funding, which presidential candidate was leading in the polls, and which party had the most members in the United States Congress. Views were sought on the media's treatment of the presidential candidates, campaign advertisements featuring Newt Gingrich and the issue of Medicare, whether presidential campaigns were more negative than in the past, the influence of the recent party conventions, and whether the news media should report public opinion poll results. Other topics addressed abortion, sources of campaign information, how much attention respondents paid to media coverage of the presidential campaign, and whether they cared who won. Demographic variables include sex, age, race, ethnicity, education level, marital status, household income, political party affiliation, political philosophy, labor union membership, voter registration status, religious preference, and whether respondents thought of themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians.
description: The data contain a weight variable (WEIGHT) that should be used in analyzing the data. This poll consists of "standard" national representative samples of the adult population with sample balancing of sex, race, age, and education.
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 online analysis version with question text..
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS1: Washington Post 1996 Politics Poll, Wave 1, September 1996, Dataset 0001
description: ABC News/Washington Post Poll Series
description: telephone interview 
 (1) The data available for download are not weighted and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis. (2) Original reports using these data may be found via the Washington Post Opinion Surveys and Polls Web site. (3) The meaning of the variable SELECTB is unknown and may be associated with the sampling method of selecting a respondent based on the adult living in the household who last had a birthday. (4) According to the data collection instrument, code 3 in the variable EDUC includes respondents who answered that they had attended a technical school. (5) Value labels for unknown codes were added in the AGE, Q10, Q37, POLPARTY, and POLPHIL variables. (6) The CASEID variable was created for use with online analysis.
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 adult living in the household who last had a birthday and who was home at the time of the interview.