DOI: 10.3886/icpsr04035.v1
title: ABC News/Washington Post Poll, March 2004
title: Version 1

description: This poll 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 for their opinions on the way George W. Bush was handling his job as president and in particular how he was handling the economy, the situation in Iraq, education, Social Security, and taxes. They were also asked to rate how President Bush was handling the cost, availability, and coverage of health insurance, creating jobs, the campaign against terrorism, the federal budget deficit, the issue of same-sex marriage, prescription drug benefits for the elderly, and protecting Americans' constitutional rights and freedoms. Respondents were also asked how closely they were following the 2004 presidential race, which candidate they would vote for, and how strongly they supported that candidate. Other items included how important those issues listed above were in determining the respondent's choice for president and who the respondent trusted to do a better job handling those issues. Respondents were also asked whether the United States was winning or losing the war on terrorism, how they would describe the state of the nation's economy, whether the economy was getting better, worse, or staying the same, and whether most Americans were better off financially than they were in 2001 when Bush became president. There were also questions about whether the war with Iraq was worth fighting, whether the Bush Administration had a clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq, whether the war with Iraq had contributed to the long-term security of the United States, and whether the Bush administration intentionally exaggerated its evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Respondents were also asked if they thought homosexual couples should be allowed to form legally recognized civil unions, whether it should be legal for homosexual couples to get married, and whether they supported amending the United States Constitution to make it against the law for homosexual couples to get married anywhere in the United States or if each state should make its own laws on homosexual marriage. Background information on respondents includes political party, voter registration status, vote choice in the 2000 presidential election, political orientation, education, religion, military background, marital status, household composition, labor union membership, Hispanic origin, race, sex, age, and household income.
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS1: Dataset
description: ABC News/Washington Post Poll Series
description: Additional information about sampling, interviewing, weighting, and sampling error may be found in the codebook.
The data are provided as an SPSS portable file.
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.
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 adult living in the household who last had a birthday and who was home at the time of the interview.