DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03833.v1
title: ABC News/Washington Post Contract with America Poll, January 1995
title: Version 1

description: For this poll, fielded on January 3-4, 1995, respondents 
 were asked to rate President Clinton's handling of the country in 
 general, the economy, and foreign affairs. It was also intended to 
 gauge the public's knowledge of the "Contract with America," a 
 nationwide Republican initiative to gain a majority in Congress in 
 which they laid out a specific action plan in the Senatorial and 
 Representative campaigns of Republicans throughout the United States. 
 Other approval rating questions sought opinions on Speaker of the 
 House Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole. Respondents 
 were queried on whether they trusted President Clinton or the 
 Republicans in Congress to provide strong leadership and handle 
 issues such as Social Security and reduce the federal budget deficit. 
 Those surveyed were asked if the switch from Democratic control of 
 the Congress to Republican control was a good thing, and if the 
 respondents had any idea how Clinton or the Republicans planned to 
 lead the nation in the next two years. Questions included who the 
 respondents would vote for if the 1996 election were to occur that 
 day. Items regarding the budget included whether respondents would 
 support an amendment to the Constitution requiring the federal budget 
 to be balanced and under what circumstances they would support such 
 an amendment, such as cutting spending on certain programs or raising 
 taxes. Opinions were gathered on a range of social issues including 
 prayer in schools, the death penalty, and welfare. Respondents were 
 asked how often they watched daytime talk shows and whether they were 
 more interested in the new session of Congress or the O.J. Simpson 
 trial. Respondents were also asked to gauge if the economy or the 
 standard of living was improving and to speculate how economically 
 hard-off their parents were or their children would be. Demographic 
 information includes party identification, voter registration status, 
 voting record, political philosophy, level of education, birth date, 
ethnicity, total yearly income, and sex.
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.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: ABC News/Washington Post Contract with America Poll, January 1995
description: Persons aged 18 and over living in households with 
telephones in the contiguous 48 United States.
description: (1) Additional information about sampling, 
 interviewing, weighting, and sampling error may be found in the 
 codebook. (2) The data are provided as an SPSS portable file. (3) 
 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. (4) 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.