DOI: 10.3886/icpsr02869.v3
title: CBS News "The Early Show" Poll, October 1999
title: Version 3

description: This special topic poll, fielded October 28-30, 1999,
solicited public opinion on the presidency, the 2000 presidential
race, and other national political issues. The results of the poll
were announced on the CBS television program "The Early
Show". Respondents were asked to give their opinions of the Bill
Clinton presidency, whether Clinton accomplished most of what he set
out to do as president, whether the country was a better place as a
result of his presidency, what the greatest successes and greatest
failures of his administration were, and whether the respondent's vote
in the 2000 presidential election should be viewed as a referendum on
the president's policies. Opinions were also solicited regarding the
most important problems that the federal government should address in
the coming year, who could be trusted more to balance the federal
budget, Congress or the President, and the role that the incoming
First Lady should play in policy-making. A series of questions dealt
with the upcoming presidential election. Respondents were asked to
give their opinions of Vice President Al Gore, Texas governor George
W. Bush, former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley, and Arizona senator
John McCain, and to comment on whom they would prefer as the nominee
of their respective political parties, and how they would vote in
various hypothetical match-ups. Each candidate was assessed in terms
of having the right kind of experience and leadership qualities to be
president, the ability to understand the complicated problems
confronting a national leader, the ability to deal wisely with an
international crisis, honesty, integrity, and concern for the needs
and problems of people like the respondent. Opinions were also
solicited on conservative commentator Pat Buchanan, developer Donald
Trump, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, and New York City mayor
Rudolph Giuliani. Respondents were also asked whether they preferred
that political candidates spend their time listening to what the
voters have to say or explaining their positions to the voters,
whether the candidates for president should be judged on both their
political records and their personal lives, and how much attention
respondents had paid to the presidential election campaign so
far. Background information on respondents includes age, sex, race,
education, religion, voter registration and participation history,
political party, political orientation, Hispanic descent, marital
status, computer access, age of children in household, and family
income.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: CBS News "The Early Show" Poll, October 1999
description: 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, hardcopy documentation has been converted
to machine-readable form 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.