DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03109
title: CBS News Monthly Poll #1, August 2000
title: Archival Version

description: This poll, fielded August 4-6, 2000, 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 to give their opinions of President Bill
Clinton, former president George H.W. Bush, and the candidates for the
2000 presidential election, Vice President Al Gore, Texas governor
George W. Bush, conservative commentator Pat Buchanan, and consumer
advocate Ralph Nader. Respondents were asked to indicate whom they
were most likely to vote for, whether that decision was firm, and who
they thought would ultimately win the election. Opinions from
respondents were also gathered regarding former Secretary of Defense
Dick Cheney, Texas First Lady Laura Bush, and Tipper Gore, wife of Al
Gore. Other questions focused on whether Al Gore and George W. Bush
cared about the needs and problems of people such as the respondent,
whether Gore and Bush were capable of handling complicated problems
that a president has to deal with, whether the two men were capable of
handling an international crisis, whether they cared about the
problems and needs of Black people, whether they were trying to bring
together different groups of Americans, and whether they had made it
clear as to what they wanted to accomplish during their presidency.
Respondents were also asked if Bush and Gore had spent more time
during the campaign attacking each other or explaining what they would
do as president, whether respondents' views on gun control would
impact the way they would vote, and if their views on gun control
agreed more with the views of Bush or Gore. Another series of
questions dealt with respondent opinions of the Democratic and
Republican parties and their handling of social and political issues,
including Social Security and education, whether the parties cared
about people such as the respondent, which party cared more about
Blacks and other minorities, and whether the two parties welcomed
people with differing viewpoints. A third series of questions queried
respondents about the Republican National Convention. Respondents
were asked if they had watched any of the coverage of the convention,
which one thing stood out the most in their minds, whether the views
expressed by the speakers at the convention represented the views of
the Republican Party, and if they had watched or listened to any part
of Bush's acceptance speech. Respondents were also asked if their
vote would be for a continuation of or a change to President Clinton's
policies, whether that vote was a vote against or for Clinton's
presidency, or whether their vote had nothing to do with Clinton.
Background information on respondents includes age, sex, race,
education, religion, access to a computer, voter registration and
participation history, political party, political orientation,
Hispanic descent, marital status, age of children in household, and
family income.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: CBS News Monthly Poll #1, August 2000
description: (1) 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, hardcopy documentation has been converted
to machine-readable form, data files have been converted to
non-platform-specific formats, and variables have been recoded to
ensure respondents' anonymity. (2) The codebook is provided by ICPSR
as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. The PDF file format was
developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF
reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how
to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided on the ICPSR Web
site.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.