DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03913
title: Voter News Service Presidential Primary Exit Polls, 2000
title: Archival Version

description: The data were collected through interviews conducted with voters exiting polling places in 25 states and with voters entering the polls in one state, Iowa, on the day of their respective primaries and caucuses to choose the Democratic and Republican parties' candidates for President of the United States. Early and absentee voters in two states, Arizona and California, were polled via the telephone prior to their state's primary days. Respondents were asked for which candidate they voted in the primaries, when and why they decided on that candidate, and what one quality and one issue mattered most in choosing that candidate. They were asked to give their opinions of the primary candidates and each candidate's likelihood of gaining his or her party's nomination and defeating the opposition party's candidate to win the presidency. Respondents were questioned on whether they considered voting in the other political party's primary. Additional questions addressed the candidates' proposed health care plans, the strength of Democratic candidates' ties to President Bill Clinton, the effectiveness of their campaign ads, and which candidates were more likely to say what they believed as opposed to what they thought the public wanted to hear. All respondents were further queried on the source of their news, their financial situation compared to four years ago, their opinions of President Clinton, and their position on abortion. Some questions were specific to a certain state, for example, in South Carolina respondents were asked to give their opinion of flying the Confederate flag over the state capitol building. Background information includes age, education, frequency of religious participation, frequency of the use of the Internet, household income in 1999, marital status, military service, number of children living in the household, political ideology, political party affiliation, race, religious affiliation, and sex.
description: The data contain weights that should be applied in all analyses. The exit poll results are weighted to reflect the complexity of the sampling design. The weighting takes into account the different probabilities of selecting a precinct and of selecting a voter within each precinct. For example, minority precincts that were selected at a higher rate receive a smaller weight than other precincts of the same size. There is also an adjustment for voters who were missed or refused to be interviewed, which is based on their observed age, race, and sex.
description: face-to-face, and telephone interview 
Much of the data is formatted as character or string type. In order to perform analyses beyond frequencies, the formats of these variables would have to be changed to numeric.
Exit polls were conducted in all Republican primaries through March 14th and in Democratic primaries held on the same day as states' Republican primaries. As a result, some states' datasets contain data for the Republican primaries only.
All surveys conducted about primaries held on March 7th had questions on both sides of the survey instrument, but while the front side was specific to the state, the back side was common to all states that day. Only a front side was used for the March 14th primaries.
In New Hampshire there were two forms of the questionnaire for each party primary. This is indicated in the last character of the file name: the "W" and "P" for the white and pink Republican forms and "Y" and "G" for the yellow and gray Democrat forms. In California, there were two forms, white and yellow.
Data users are strongly advised to make sure that there are at least ten precincts in a geographic area before conducting any analysis of these subsets, since the respondents are clustered by precinct.
description: United States voters on primary day 2000 in 25 states.
description: The samples were selected in two stages. First, a probability sample of voting precincts within each state was selected that represents the different geographic areas across the state and the vote by party. Precincts were selected with a probability proportionate to the number of voters in each precinct. Each voter in a state had the same chance to have his or her precinct selected. There is one exception. In some states, precincts that have large minority populations were sampled at a higher rate than other precincts. The sample weighting adjusts the representation of these precincts to their correct share of the total vote. Second, within each precinct, voters were sampled systematically throughout the voting day at a rate that gave all voters in a precinct the same chance of being interviewed.