DOI: 10.3886/icpsr32544.v1
title: ABC News/Washington Post Monthly Poll, August 2010
title: Version 1

description: This poll, fielded August 30 - September 02, 2010, is a part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicits public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. Respondents were asked whether they approved of the way Barack Obama was handling his job as president, the economy, the federal budget deficit, and the situation in Iraq. Respondents were also asked whether they approved of the way the United States Congress was doing its job, whether they trusted the Democrats or the Republicans to do a better job in coping with the nation's problems in future years, handling the economy, health care, immigration issues, the situation in Afghanistan, taxes, and the federal budget deficit. Multiple questions addressed the 2010 congressional elections including whether respondents would vote for the Democratic or the Republican House of Representatives candidate in their district if the election were held that day, whether they thought most Republicans and Democrats in Congress deserved to be re-elected, whether they planned to re-elect their representative in Congress, and what respondents considered the single most important issue pertaining to their congressional vote. Information was collected on respondents' opinions on Islam, whether respondents had a good understanding of the beliefs of Islam, whether respondents personally knew anyone who was Muslim, whether they had some feelings of prejudice against Muslims, and whether they supported the building of a Muslim community center near the former World Trade Center site. Additional opinions were solicited about President Obama, the Tea Party movement, the state of the nation's economy, the war in Iraq, respondents' feelings about the way the federal government works, and national security. Demographic variables include sex, age, race, education level, household income, religious preference, type of residential area (e.g., urban or rural), political party affiliation, political philosophy, voter registration status, and whether respondents thought of themselves as born-again Christians.
description: The data contain a weight variable (WEIGHT) that should be used in analyzing the data. The weights were derived using demographic information from the Census to adjust for sampling and nonsampling deviations from population values. Until 2008, ABC News used a cell-based weighting system in which respondents were classified into one of 48 or 32 cells (depending on sample size) based on their age, race, sex, and education; weights were assigned so the proportion in each cell matched the Census Bureau's most recent Current Population Survey. To achieve greater consistency and reduce the chance of large weights, ABC News in 2007 tested and evaluated iterative weighting, commonly known as raking or rim weighting, in which the sample is weighted sequentially to Census targets one variable at a time, continuing until the optimum distribution across variables (again, age, race, sex, and education) is achieved. ABC News adopted rim weighting in January 2008. Weights are capped at lows of 0.2 and highs of 6.
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: Performed consistency checks.; Created variable labels and/or value labels.; Standardized missing values.; Created online analysis version with question text.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS1: Dataset
description: ABC News/Washington Post Poll Series
description: telephone interview 
The variables PCTBLACK, PCTASIAN, PCTHISP, MSAFLAG, CSA, CBSA, METRODIV, NIELSMKT, BLOCKCNT, and ZIP were converted from character variables to numeric.
To preserve respondent confidentiality, codes for the variables FIPS (FIPS County), ZIP (ZIP code), and QD1A (ZIP Code)have been replaced with blank codes.
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.
description: Persons aged 18 years 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. Field work for most of ABC's United States polling is carried out by TNS of Horsham, PA, using a dual-frame sample design covering both landline telephone and cell phone-only respondents, with samples produced by Survey Sampling Inc. of Shelton, CT.