DOI: 10.3886/icpsr30141.v1
title: Cooperative Congressional Election Study, 2006
title: Version 1

description: The Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) focused on the study of how Americans view Congress and hold their representatives accountable during elections. The very large sample for this survey provided the opportunity to study legislative constituencies -- states and congressional districts -- as well as voters within those constituencies, to study very rare or low frequency events or very small populations, and to measure with fairly high accuracy interactions. Respondents of this survey were asked whether they approved of the way George W. Bush was handling his job as president, what they thought was the most important problem facing the country, whether they were satisfied with the way things were going in the country, and their opinions of the condition of the economy in their communities, in their state, and in the United States. Respondents were also asked whether they approved of the way their governor, their United States Senators, and their United States House Representatives were handling their jobs. Information was collected on whether respondents thought their neighborhoods were politically active, whether they were mostly Democrat or Republican, whether the United States was more Democratic or Republican, and whether they were interested in politics and current affairs. Information was collected on which candidate respondents planned on voting for in the races for governor, for United States Senate, and for United States House of Representatives, and which party they wanted to see control the United States Congress. Opinions were solicited on "partial-birth abortion", federal government stem cell research funding, United States troop withdrawal from Iraq, illegal immigration, increasing the minimum wage, cutting taxes on capital gains, a trade agreement that reduces barriers between the United States and Central America, and whether respondents thought their United States Senators voted for or against these issues. Respondents were queried about their voting experience on November 7, 2006, including whether they voted and how they voted, whether they were asked to show identification, how long they had to wait in line, whether there was a problem with their registration, who they voted for, and whether they voted for the Republican or Democratic candidate for various offices on the ballot including Secretary of State and Attorney General. Information was collected on whether respondents were part of any organizations, donated money to any political candidates or political party committees, tried to persuade someone to vote or how to vote, whether they were contacted by a candidate or political party organization to get them to vote, and who they thought would have the most seats after the newly elected United States House of Representatives and the Senate were sworn in. Other topics included same-sex marriage, Social Security, environmental protection, and Affirmative Action. Demographic information collected included race, religious preference, religious attendance, political viewpoints, employment status, home ownership status, household income, political party affiliation, and voter registration status.
description: The core intellectual goal of the survey was to study representation and electoral competition, and to demonstrate the workability of a large coordinated survey.
description: Thirty-six teams of researchers pooled their resources to create a very large sample national survey. Each research team had purchased a 1,000 person national sample survey, which was conducted in October and November of 2006 by Polimetrix of Palo Alto, CA. Each survey had approximately 120 questions. For each survey of 1,000 persons, half of the questionnaire was developed and controlled entirely by each of the individual research teams, and half of the questionnaire was devoted to Common Content. Common Content amounted to a 36,500 person survey that allowed the collaborative to measure the distribution of political attitudes and preferences within states and congressional districts.
description: The sample drawn for the CCES is a stratified national sample of 36,500 adults. For more sampling information, please refer to the original documentation in the codebook.
description: Datasets: DS1: Cooperative Congressional Election Study, 2006
description: Individuals aged 18 years and older in the United States.
description: web-based surveyDemographic and geographic variables V1004 V2031, V2034, V2038, V2039, V2040, V2041, V2054, V2074, V2075, V2076, V2081, V2083, V2085, V2111, V2129, V3037, V3038, V3040, V3041, V4002, V4003, and V5047 were dropped from this dataset in order to avoid respondent disclosure risk.