DOI: 10.3886/icpsr04016.v3
title: CBS News Monthly Poll #2, March 2004
title: Version 3

description: This poll, fielded March 30-April 1, 2004, is part of a
series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on political and
social issues. Views were sought on the war with Iraq, the 2004
presidential campaign, and President George W. Bush and his handling
of the presidency, the economy, and foreign affairs. Questions were
posed regarding the condition of the national economy, whether the
country was moving in the right or wrong direction, and whether the
respondent or a household member had lost his or her job in the past
year. Respondents were asked whether the result of the war with Iraq
and the removal of Saddam Hussein from power was worth the human and
economic costs, whether the United States made the right decision in
taking military action against Iraq, how long troops would remain in
Iraq, the success of the war on terrorism, and whether Saddam Hussein
was personally involved in the terrorist attacks of September 11,
2001. A series of questions asked whether the policies of the Bush
administration made the United States safer or less safe from
terrorism, whether the administration focused too much on the Iraq war
and not enough on al Qaeda terrorists, and whether the Clinton and
Bush administrations and United States intelligence agencies did all
they could to prevent the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Respondents were asked how closely they followed the news about the
hearings investigating the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,
whether the White House cooperated with the hearings, and whether
members of the Bush administration told the entire truth about what
they knew prior to the terrorist attacks. Respondents were also polled
on how much attention they were paying to the 2004 presidential
campaign, the likelihood that they would vote, whether they would vote
for President George W. Bush or Democratic candidate John Kerry,
whether their minds were made up, whether they had seen or heard any
of the presidential campaign commercials in the last month, and the
effect of each candidate's election on the economy and terrorism.
Other topics addressed privacy issues associated with the use of
supermarket customer loyalty cards, the controversy surrounding the
death of Princess Diana of Wales, life on Mars, and outer space
travel. Background information includes sex, age, religion,
religiosity, marital status, education, ethnicity, household income,
political party affiliation, political orientation, number of
telephone lines in household, whether the respondent or a family
member served in the United States armed forces, and voter
registration and participation history.
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 Monthly Poll #2, March 2004
description: Adult population of the United States aged 18 and over
having a telephone at home.
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, 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.