DOI: 10.3886/icpsr24607
title: ABC News/Washington Post Monthly Poll, May 2008
title: Archival Version

description: This poll, fielded May 8-11, 2008, is part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. A national sample of 1,122 adults was surveyed, including an oversample of African Americans, for a total of 206 African American respondents. Views were sought on how well George W. Bush was handling the presidency, whether the country was moving in the right direction, and whether the Democratic or Republican party could be trusted to do a better job coping with the main problems the nation would face over the next few years. Respondents were asked how closely they were following the 2008 presidential race, their opinions of presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain, for whom they would vote in the general election in November, which candidate had the best chance of getting elected, and how comfortable respondents would be with a president who was African American, a president who was a woman, and a president over the age of 72. Other questions asked whether Hillary Clinton should drop out of the Democratic primary, whether Democrats would be able to unite if Obama were nominated, and who Obama and McCain should choose as vice presidential running mates if nominated by their parties. Additional topics addressed the controversy over comments made by Barack Obama's minister, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, how concerned respondents were that they could maintain their current standard of living, the most difficult economic issue affecting their family, particularly recent increases in the price of gasoline, and whether they supported a summer suspension of the federal gasoline tax. Demographic variables include sex, age, race, marital status, political party affiliation, voter registration status, political philosophy, education level, religious preference, and whether respondents considered themselves to be a born-again Christian.
description: The data contain a weight variable (WEIGHT) that should be used in analyzing the data. The weights were derived using demographic information from the Census to adjust for sampling and nonsampling deviations from population values. Until 2008 ABC News used a cell-based weighting system in which respondents were classified into one of 48 or 32 cells (depending on sample size) based on their age, race, sex and education; weights were assigned so the proportion in each cell matched the Census Bureau's most recent Current Population Survey. To achieve greater consistency and reduce the chance of large weights, ABC News in 2007 tested and evaluated iterative weighting, commonly known as raking or rim weighting, in which the sample is weighted sequentially to Census targets one variable at a time, continuing until the optimum distribution across variables (again, age, race, sex and education) is achieved. ABC News adopted rim weighting in January 2008. Weights are capped at lows of 0.2 and highs of 6. The oversample of African Americans was weighted to their correct share of the national population.
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. This poll included an African American oversample. Please refer to the codebook documentation for more information on sampling.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: ABC News/Washington Post Monthly Poll, May 2008
description: Persons aged 18 and over living in households with telephones in the contiguous 48 United States.
description: computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI)The data available for download are not weighted and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis.The variables PCTBLACK, PCTASIAN, PCTHISP, MSAFLAG, CSA, CBSA, METRODIV, NIELSMKT, BLOCKCNT, and ZIP were converted from character variables to numeric, and periods in variable names (such as Q30.1) were replaced with underscores in order to be compatible with current statistical software packages.To preserve respondent confidentiality, codes for the variables FIPS (FIPS County) and ZIP (ZIP Code) have been replaced with blank codes.System-missing values were recoded to -1.The CASEID variable was created for use with online analysis.Several codes in the variable CBSA contain diacritical marks.Value labels for unknown codes were added in variables MSA, CSA, CBSA, and METRODIV.The data collection was produced by Taylor Nelson Sofres of Horsham, PA. 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.