DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03709.v3
title: CBS News/New York Times New Jersey State Survey, October 2002
title: Version 3

description: This special topic poll is part of a continuing series of
monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the presidency and a
range of other political and social issues. The study was conducted in
part to assess respondents' interest in and opinions about the 2002
elections in New Jersey. Residents of that state were asked to give
their opinions of President George W. Bush and his handling of the
presidency, as well as their views of United States Senators Jon
Corzine and Robert Torricelli, New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey, and
former United States Senator Frank Lautenberg. Those queried were
asked whether they intended to vote in the November 5, 2002,
elections, and for whom they would vote if the election for United
States Senator were held that day, given a choice between Lautenberg
(Democratic Party) and Douglas Forrester (Republican Party).
Respondents were also asked if Lautenberg and Forrester had spent more
time during the campaign attacking each other or explaining what they
would do if elected, whether they found the Senate race interesting or
dull, what they considered to be the most important issue in deciding
how to vote, and whether they considered their vote as a vote for or
against Bush. Those polled answered sets of questions comparing
Lautenberg and Forrester as Senate candidates in terms of their
experience, honesty, integrity, age, political orientation, position
on Iraq, and their potential decisions on United States Supreme Court
nominees. A series of questions addressed the withdrawal of
Torricelli from the Senate race and Lautenberg's replacement of him:
whether Torricelli did the right thing by withdrawing, whether it was
fair that the Democrats replaced him on the ballot, whether the New
Jersey Supreme Court made the right decision by allowing his
replacement, and whether that decision had made a difference in how
the respondent intended to vote. Respondents' views were sought on the
use of tax dollars to pay for abortions for indigent women, increased
restrictions on the sale of handguns, whether the sentence for a
murder conviction should be the death penalty or life in prison
without parole, whether companies responsible for major pollution
problems should be held accountable for the clean-up costs, and
whether the government should cover losses incurred by individuals who
chose to invest their Social Security taxes in the stock
market. Additional questions probed respondents' views on corruption
in New Jersey politics, the importance of which political party
controls the United States Congress, the influence of Lautenberg and
Forrester campaign advertisements, and whether the respondent would
vote for musician Bruce Springsteen if he were a candidate for United
States Senator from New Jersey. Background information on respondents
includes age, gender, political party, political orientation, voter
registration and participation history, handgun ownership, education,
religion, marital status, Hispanic descent, race, years in community,
and household income.
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/New York Times New Jersey State Survey, October 2002
description: Adult population of the state of New Jersey 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
non-platform-specific formats, and variables have been recoded to
ensure respondents' anonymity. (2) The codebook is provided by ICPSR
as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. The PDF file format was
developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF
reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how
to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided on the ICPSR Web
site.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.