DOI: 10.3886/icpsr34465
title: CBS News/60 Minutes/Vanity Fair National Poll, December #2, 2011
title: Archival Version

description: This poll, fielded December of 2011 and the second of two, is a part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicits public opinion on a range of political and social issues. Respondents were asked how well Barack Obama was handling the presidency, foreign policy, and the economy. Further questions asked respondents whether the country was moving in the right direction, the most important problem facing the country, the state of the national economy, how the government was working, and whether Congress was performing their job well. Opinions were sought on illegal immigration, job creation, the budget deficit, Medicare and Social Security, and raising taxes on households making more than one million dollars. Further information was sought about how concerned the respondent was that they or someone in their household would lose their job in the next twelve months, their family's financial outlook, and whether they or a family member were on Medicare, Social Security, or any other type of government benefits. Respondents were queried about how much attention they were paying to the 2012 campaign, whether they planned to vote in a 2012 primary or caucus, whether they watched or listened to the Republican debates, who they preferred for the Republican nomination and how sure they were about this choice, their enthusiasm for the 2012 election, how well they knew the Republican candidates' economic policies, and which issues were most important when choosing the Republican nominee. Opinions were also sought on the candidates for the Republican nomination with special attention on the political philosophies, personalities, beliefs, and values of candidates Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Newt Gingrich. Finally, respondents were asked a number of questions pertaining to their social lives and societal attitudes. Demographic information includes sex, age, race, marital status, education level, household income, employment status, religious preference, type of residential area (e.g., urban or rural), political party affiliation, political philosophy, voter registration status, voting behavior, number of phones, and whether respondents thought of themselves as born-again Christians.
description: The data contain a weight variable that should be used in analyzing the data. According to the CBS News Web site, the 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
description: Smallest Geographic Unit: congressional district
description: A variation of random-digit dialing (RDD) 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. Phone numbers were dialed from RDD samples of both standard land-lines and cell phones. 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).