DOI: 10.3886/icpsr29045
title: ABC News/Washington Post Monthly Poll, December 2009
title: Archival Version

description: This poll, fielded December 10-13 2009, 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. Respondents were asked to give their opinions of President Barack Obama and his handling of the presidency, the federal budget deficit, health care, the situation in Afghanistan, unemployment, global warming, and the economy. Respondents were asked whether the Obama Administration or the Republicans in Congress could be trusted to do a better job handling the economy, health care reform, the situation in Afghanistan and energy policy. Several questions addressed health care including whether respondents supported the health care system being developed by Congress and the Obama Administration, whether they believed health care reform would increase the federal budget deficit, whether government should lower the age requirement for Medicare, and what the respondents' plan preference was for people who are not insured. Noneconomic questions focused on the role of the United States in Afghanistan, confidence in the Obama Administration in the handling of Afghanistan and the Taliban, and the environment. Other questions focused on the topics of health care in the United States, job availability, personal finances as well as opinions on professional golfer Tiger Woods. Demographic variables include sex, age, race, political political philosophy, party affiliation, education level, religious preference, household income, 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.
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: Standardized missing values.; Created online analysis version with question text.; Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS1: Dataset
description: ABC News/Washington Post Poll Series
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, STATE, CONGDIST, and ZIP were converted from character variables to numeric.
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, COLLEDUC, 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.
description: Persons aged 18 and over living in households with telephones in the contiguous 48 United States.
description: Households were selected by random-digit dialing. Within households, the respondent selected was the youngest adult living in the household who was home at the time of the interview. Please refer to the codebook documentation for more information on sampling.