DOI: 10.3886/icpsr24589.v1
title: ABC News/Washington Post Poll, July 2007
title: Version 1

description: This poll, fielded July 18-21, 2007, is part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the current presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. This poll included an oversample of African American respondents. Respondents were asked whether they approved of the way George W. Bush was handling the presidency and issues such as ethics in government and whether they approved of the way the Vice President Dick Cheney and the United States Congress were handling their jobs. Views were sought on the Iraq war, including whether it was worth fighting, the current number of United States military forces in Iraq, whether a deadline should be set for the withdrawal of troops, and the current strength of the Al Qaeda terrorist network compared to before September 11, 2001. Respondents were also asked how closely they were following the 2008 presidential race, for whom they would vote if the presidential primary or caucus were being held in their state that day, how satisfied they were with the choice of candidates, their opinions of the candidates, and how comfortable they would be with a president who was African American, Hispanic, Jewish, Mormon, or a woman. Additional topics addressed abortion, the use of surveillance cameras in public places, the use of the internet to obtain information on political candidates, whether the federal government was doing enough to ensure the safety of imported products and food, whether the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should be allowed to regulate cigarettes, and recent United States Supreme court decisions restricting partial birth abortion and how local school boards use race to assign children to schools. Demographic variables includes sex, age, race, marital status, household income, education level, voter registration status, political party affiliation, political philosophy, type of residential area (e.g., urban or rural), religious preference, and whether respondents and their close personal friends or family members served in the United States military in Iraq since March 2003.
description: The data contain a weight variable (WEIGHT) that should be used in analyzing the data. The data were weighted using demographic information from the Census to adjust for sampling and nonsampling deviations from population values. Respondents customarily were classified into one of 48 cells based on age, race, sex, and education. Weights were assigned so the proportion in each of these 48 cells matched the actual population proportion according to the Census Bureau's most recent Current Population Survey.
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. African American respondents were oversampled.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: ABC News/Washington Post Poll, July 2007
description: Persons aged 18 and over living in households with telephones in the contiguous 48 United States.
description: computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI)The data available for download are not weighted and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis.This poll included an oversample of African American respondents, as identified in the SAMPTYPE variable.The variables PCTBLACK, PCTASIAN, PCTHISP, MSAFLAG, CSA, CBSA, METRODIV, NIELSMKT, BLOCKCNT, STCODE and ZIP were converted from character variables to numeric. Variables EDUBREAK, AGEBREAK, and RACENET were reformatted for use with online analysis.To preserve respondent confidentiality, codes for the variables FIPS (FIPS County) and ZIP (ZIP Code) have been replaced with blank codes, and the variable SMSKEY (telephone number) was removed from the data set.System-missing values were recoded to -1.The CASEID variable was created for use with online analysis.Value labels for unknown codes were added in variables MSA, CSA, CBSA, and METRODIV.Several codes in the variable CBSA contain diacritical marks.The data collection was produced by Taylor Nelson Sofres of Horsham, PA. Original reports using these data may be found via the ABC
News Polling Unit Web site and via the

Washington Post Opinion Surveys and Polls Web site.