DOI: 10.3886/icpsr26162
title: CBS News/New York Times Monthly Poll, May 2008
title: Archival Version

description: This poll, fielded May 1-3, 2008, 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. Opinions were sought on how well George W. Bush was handling the presidency and the condition of the national economy. Respondents were asked how much attention they were paying to the 2008 presidential campaign, who they would vote for if the election were held that day, whether they were more likely to vote in a Democratic or Republican primary or caucus in their state, who they wanted to see as the Democratic or Republican nominee, their level of support for this candidate, and who they expected to actually win the election. Respondents gave their opinions of Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and Republican presidential candidate John McCain. Other questions addressed the treatment of the candidates by the news media and the respondent's knowledge of the religious faith of the candidates. Opinions were also sought on Barack Obama's former minister Reverend Jeremiah Wright's statements and whether his statements affected the respondent's opinions of Obama, how well Obama handled the situation, the degree of influence Reverend Wright had on Obama's spiritual and political views, whether Obama shared Wright's feelings toward the United States, whether Wright's comments would affect how they voted in November, whether the media spent an appropriate amount of time covering the situation, and why Obama decided to renounce his ties to Reverend Wright. Additional questions asked about removing federal tax on gasoline during the summer months and whether the respondent ever disagreed with the statements made by their own religious leader. Demographic variables include sex, age, race, education level, marital status, political party affiliation, political philosophy, household income, voter registration status and participation history, religious preference, frequency of religious attendance, and whether respondents considered themselves to be a born-again Christian.
description: The data contain a weight variable (WGHT) that should be used in analyzing the data. According 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 
The data available for download are not weighted and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis.
The CASEID variable was reformatted in order to make it a unique identifier.
This data collection was produced by CBS News, New York, NY.
Truncated value label in the variable EDUC were corrected.
Variable Q56 was recoded to protect respondent confidentiality.
description: Persons aged 18 and over living in households with telephones in the United States.
description: A variation of random-digit dialing 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. 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). Phone numbers were dialed from RDD samples of both standard land-lines and cell phones.