DOI: 10.3886/icpsr22584.v1
title: CBS News Monthly Poll #1, September 2007
title: Version 1

description: This poll, fielded September 4-8, 2007, is 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. A national sample of 1,264 adults were surveyed, including an oversample 130 individuals with family members who are now serving in the United States armed forces or the United States reserves. Respondents were asked whether they approved of the way George W. Bush was handling his job as president, whether they approved of the way Bush was handling the war in Iraq, foreign policy, the economy, and the United States campaign against terrorism. Respondents were also asked whether they approved of the way Congress was handling its job, whether they thought the country was going in the right direction, and what they thought was the most important problem facing the country. Respondents were asked to rate the condition of the national economy, whether they thought the economy was getting better, whether they thought removing Saddam Hussein from power was worth the loss of American life and other costs of attacking Iraq, and whether they served in the United States armed forces or had any family members that served. Information was collected on how much attention respondents paid to the 2008 presidential campaign, whether respondents thought abortion should be available to those who want it, whether presidential candidates should be judged on their political records and personal lives, and whether they would vote for the Republican candidate or the Democratic candidate in the 2008 presidential election. Opinions were sought on whether being mayor of a large city, a United States Senator, or a governor was the right kind of experience for becoming president of the United States. Opinions were also sought on the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. Respondents were then asked a number of questions regarding Rudy Giuliani's positions and policies such as why the Republican party should nominate him as its presidential candidate, whether respondents knew his positions on issues, whether he'd do a better job fighting terrorism, whether he was more conservative compared to other presidential candidates, how well he handled the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center, and whether the policies of his administration caused crime to decrease or caused race relations to improve. Questions about the war in Iraq included whether the United States was right in taking military action against Iraq, how respondents thought things were going for the United States in Iraq, whether the United States should increase the number of troops in Iraq, what party they thought would be more likely to make the right decisions on the war in Iraq, whether they thought that the war in Iraq was part of the war on terrorism, whether they thought there would be more or less violence in Iraq if the United States troops withdrew, what they thought the biggest accomplishment was in the Iraq War, and how likely they thought it was that another terrorist attack would happen in the United States. Finally, respondents were asked which party they thought had higher ethical standards, whether they were following the news about recent talks between Iran and the United States, and whether they thought Iran was a threat to the United States. Demographic information includes sex, age, race, marital status, education level, household income, military service, religious preference, type of residential area (e.g., urban or rural), political party affiliation, political philosophy, and voter registration status.
description: The data contain weight variables that should be used in analyzing the data. According to 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: Created variable labels and/or value labels.; Created online analysis version with question text.; 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.
Truncated value labels in variable Q3, Q102 and EDUC were corrected.
Variables Q3, Q54, Q67, and Q78 contain truncated value labels.
The data contain an oversample of those with family members who are now serving in the United States armed forces or the United States reserves as identified by the OSMP variable.
This data collection was produced by CBS News, New York, NY.
description: Persons aged 18 years and older living in households with telephones in the United States.
description: A variation of random-digit dialing (RDD) 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. Phone numbers were dialed from RDD samples of both standard land-lines and cell phones. 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). This poll included an oversample of those with family members who are now serving in the United States armed forced or the United States reserves.