DOI: 10.3886/icpsr24360
title: CBS News Monthly Poll, October 2007
title: Archival Version

description: This poll, fielded October 12-16, 2007, is a part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicits public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. Respondents were asked for their opinions of George W. Bush and his handling of the presidency and other issues such as foreign policy, the condition of the national economy, what was the most important problem facing the country, the situation in Iraq, the campaign against terrorism, and whether they approved of the way the United States Congress was handling its job. Respondents were also queried on their stance on abortion. A number of questions were asked concerning the 2008 presidential election. These included whether the respondent would vote for the Republican or Democratic candidate, how much attention they paid to the 2008 presidential campaign, one issue that they would like to hear the candidates discuss, and their level of enthusiasm about voting in the election. They were asked to give their opinion of presidential candidates including Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama. Respondents were queried on which candidate they preferred to represent the Democratic and Republican parties, whether they thought the presidential candidates had strong religious values, if they had more honesty and integrity than most people in public life, and if they would remove a large number of troops from Iraq in their term as president. Opinions were collected on how important it was that a presidential candidate pledge not to raise taxes, their stance on social issues such as abortion and same sex marriage, and global warming for the respondent's vote for president. Respondents were asked if they favored or opposed a program that provides health insurance for some children in low income families, and if they would be willing to pay more in taxes in order to fund the expansion of this program. Questions concerning the war in Iraq included whether the respondent thought the United States did the right thing in taking military action there, how things are going for the United States in its efforts to bring stability and order to Iraq, how much longer would they be willing to have large numbers of United States troops remain in Iraq, if the troop surge in Iraq was making the situation better, and if the war in Iraq was a part of or separate from the war on terrorism. Additionally, respondents were asked if they noticed what country the goods they purchase are manufactured in, the overall quality of manufactured goods produced in China, and if they stopped buying products made in China as a result of recent recalls. Demographic variables include sex, age, race, education level, household income, marital status, religion, religiosity, political philosophy, voter registration status and participation history, and the presence of household members between the ages of 18 and 24.
description: The data contain a weight variable (WGHT) that should be used in analyzing the data. According the CBS News Web site, data were weighted to match United States Census Bureau breakdowns on age, sex, race, education, and region of the country. The data were also adjusted for the fact that people who share a telephone with others have less chance to be contacted than people who live alone and have their own telephones, and that households with more than one telephone number have more chances to be called than households with only one telephone number.
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: Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS1: Dataset
description: CBS News/New York Times Poll Series
description: telephone interview 
The data available for download are not weighted and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis.
The CASEID variable was reformatted in order to make it a unique identifier.
description: Persons aged 18 and over living in households with telephones in the contiguous 48 United States.
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).