DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03707
title: CBS News South Dakota State Poll, October 2002
title: Archival Version

description: This special topic poll is part of a continuing series of
monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the presidency and a
range of other political and social issues. The study was conducted in
part to assess respondents' interest in and opinions about the 2002
gubernatorial and congressional elections in South Dakota. Residents
of that state were asked to give their opinions of President George
W. Bush and his handling of the presidency, as well as their views of
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, his handling of Senate Democrats,
and his representation of South Dakota interests. Those queried were
asked whether they intended to vote or had already voted through the
mail or absentee ballot in the November 5, 2002, elections.
Respondents were asked for whom they would vote if the election for
governor were held that day, given a choice between Mike Rounds
(Republican Party) and Jim Abbott (Democratic Party). Similarly, they
were asked to make a choice between John Thune (Republican Party) and
Tim Johnson (Democratic Party) for United States Senate, and between
Bill Janklow (Republican Party) and Stephanie Herseth (Democratic
Party) for United States Representative. Additional topics related to
the Senate election focused on the involvement of people and groups
from outside South Dakota, whether the respondent's vote could be
thought of as a vote for/against Bush and/or Daschle, and whether
either candidate had attacked the other unfairly. Respondents were
asked to assess the importance of the following issues in their
electoral decision-making: possible United States military action
against Iraq, drought relief for South Dakota, the economy, and which
political party controlled the United States Senate. Additional topics
covered whether the economy and jobs, or terrorism and national
security, should be the higher priority for the nation, whether
respondents supported or opposed the United States taking military
action to try to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, and whether
respondents intended to vote through the mail, absentee ballot, or at
their precinct polling place. Background information on respondents
includes age, gender, political party, political orientation, voter
registration and participation history, method of voting in previous
elections, education, religion, marital status, Hispanic descent,
race, years in community, and household income.
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).
description: Datasets: 
DS1: CBS News South Dakota State Poll, October 2002
description: Adult population of the state of South Dakota aged 18 and
over having a telephone at home.
description: 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.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.