DOI: 10.3886/icpsr02003
title: ABC News/Washington Post Poll, August 1996
title: Archival Version

description: This poll, conducted August 1996, is part of a continuing 
 series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on a range of 
 political and social issues. Views were gathered on the 1996 
 presidential and congressional elections, as well as on President 
 Bill Clinton and his handling of the presidency, the economy, and 
 foreign affairs. Respondents were polled on whether they were better 
 or worse off financially compared to three years ago, whether it was 
 more important to cut federal taxes or balance the federal budget, 
 and whether they supported middle class tax cuts, even if it meant 
 cutting spending on federal programs. Questions involving the 
 upcoming presidential election polled respondents on the likelihood 
 that they would vote, whom they would vote for (President Bill 
 Clinton, Republican Bob Dole, or Reform Party candidate Ross Perot), 
 whether each candidate had the qualities needed to be an effective 
 president, the success of their political campaigns, and who the 
 Republican vice-presidential candidate should be. Opinions were 
 solicited on whether the presidential candidates had a vision for the 
 future of the country, had high moral and ethical standards, cared 
 about people like the respondent, had new ideas, and stood up for 
 what they believed in, and which one would do a better job handling 
 issues such as the economy, crime, the environment, and Medicare. 
 Respondents were queried on whether they would vote for a Democratic 
 or Republican candidate in the upcoming United States House of 
 Representatives election, whether they approved of the way the United 
 States Congress was doing its job, and whether Pat Buchanan should be 
 allowed to make a speech at the Republican convention. Respondents 
 were also asked which political party best represented their ideal of 
 how the United States should be governed, whether the views of each 
 party were too conservative or too liberal, whether respondents 
 supported Ross Perot's new Reform Party, and whether the country 
 needed a new political party. Views were also elicited on issues such 
 as a federal balanced budget amendment, the death penalty, 
 congressional term limits, gun control, organized prayer in public 
 schools, a flat-tax system, recent changes to the welfare system, 
 affirmative action, gay rights, and whether respondents would prefer 
 a smaller government with fewer services or a larger government with 
 many services. Several questions addressed whether abortion should be 
 legal, whether the Republican vice-presidential candidate should 
 support legal abortion, and whether the Republican platform should 
 support a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. Other topics 
 addressed respondents' level of confidence in the United States 
 government to prevent future terrorist attacks, how worried they were 
 about the possibility of major terrorist attacks in the United 
 States, and whether the government should mount a war against 
 terrorism, even if it cost billions of dollars and intruded on 
 personal freedoms. Background variables include sex, age, ethnicity, 
 marital status, employment status, education, religion, household 
 income, social class, subjective size of community, labor union 
 membership, political orientation, political party affiliation, and 
voter registration and participation history.
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.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: ABC News/Washington Post Poll, August 1996
description: Persons aged 18 and over living in households with 
telephones in the contiguous 48 United States.
description: (1) Additional information about sampling, 
 interviewing, weighting, and sampling error may be found in the 
 codebook. (2) 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. (3) 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.