DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03124
title: CBS News/New York Times New York State Poll, September 2000
title: Archival Version

description: This special topic poll, fielded September 14-19, 2000,
queried residents of New York State on the Senate race between First
Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and United States Representative Rick
Lazio in 2000, and on a range of other political and social issues.
Respondents were asked to give their opinions of President Bill
Clinton, New York State governor George Pataki, New York City mayor
Rudolph Giuliani, Hillary Clinton, Lazio, Connecticut senator Joseph
Lieberman, and Arizona senator John McCain. Regarding the 2000 Senate
race, respondents were asked how much attention they were paying to
the upcoming election, for whom they would vote, and whether that
decision was firm. Regardless of how they intended to vote,
respondents were asked who they thought was going to win the Senate
election in November 2000. Respondents were also asked which of the
two candidates cared about people like the respondent. Opinions
regarding the availability of abortions, tax-funded abortions,
partial-birth abortions, and how much their votes for senator would be
affected by their views on abortion were also gathered from
respondents. Respondents were asked whether they supported tax-funded
vouchers for private and religious education, and whether the
projected budget surplus should be used for tax cuts, paying down the
national debt, or preserving programs such as Medicare and Social
Security. The poll queried respondents on whether Hillary Clinton and
Lazio had the right kind of experience and character to be a senator
from New York State. Respondents were also asked whether Hillary
Clinton or Lazio, if elected, would be a strong supporter of Israel
and would be able to get along and work with other members of the
Senate, and whether Hillary Clinton's job as senator would be affected
because she had not lived in New York for many years. Items on
campaign advertising covered whether the candidates had spent more
time attacking each other or explaining what they would do as senator,
whether the 2000 senate campaign was more negative than the 1998
campaign, whether television ads for the candidates were true or not,
and whether these commercials had helped the respondents decide whom
to support. Other questions queried respondents on whether they had
watched the debate between Hillary Clinton and Lazio on September 13,
2000, which candidate they thought did the better job in the debate,
whether the tone of the debate was too negative, whether either
candidate was too aggressive in the debate, and which candidate they
thought won the debate. Opinions were also gathered about Lazio's
proposal that both he and Hillary Clinton not accept "soft money"
contributions, whether Hillary Clinton should accept the proposal, and
whether Lazio was genuine about his proposal. Regarding the upcoming
2000 presidential election, respondents were asked for whom they were
most likely to vote: Vice President Al Gore, Texas governor George
W. Bush, conservative commentator Pat Buchanan, or consumer advocate
Ralph Nader. Background information on respondents includes voter
registration and participation history, political party, political
orientation, marital status, religion, education, age, sex, race,
Hispanic descent, and family income.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: CBS News/New York Times New York State Poll, September 2000
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, hardcopy documentation has been converted
to machine-readable form, 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.