ABC News/Washington Post Contract with America Poll, January 1995 (ICPSR 3833)

Version Date: Nov 30, 2006

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Principal Investigator(s):
ABC News; The Washington Post

Series:

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03833.v1

Version V1

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Summary

For this poll, fielded on January 3-4, 1995, respondents were asked to rate President Clinton's handling of the country in general, the economy, and foreign affairs. It was also intended to gauge the public's knowledge of the "Contract with America," a nationwide Republican initiative to gain a majority in Congress in which they laid out a specific action plan in the Senatorial and Representative campaigns of Republicans throughout the United States. Other approval rating questions sought opinions on Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole. Respondents were queried on whether they trusted President Clinton or the Republicans in Congress to provide strong leadership and handle issues such as Social Security and reduce the federal budget deficit. Those surveyed were asked if the switch from Democratic control of the Congress to Republican control was a good thing, and if the respondents had any idea how Clinton or the Republicans planned to lead the nation in the next two years. Questions included who the respondents would vote for if the 1996 election were to occur that day. Items regarding the budget included whether respondents would support an amendment to the Constitution requiring the federal budget to be balanced and under what circumstances they would support such an amendment, such as cutting spending on certain programs or raising taxes. Opinions were gathered on a range of social issues including prayer in schools, the death penalty, and welfare. Respondents were asked how often they watched daytime talk shows and whether they were more interested in the new session of Congress or the O.J. Simpson trial. Respondents were also asked to gauge if the economy or the standard of living was improving and to speculate how economically hard-off their parents were or their children would be. Demographic information includes party identification, voter registration status, voting record, political philosophy, level of education, birth date, ethnicity, total yearly income, and sex.

Citation

ABC News, and The Washington Post. ABC News/Washington Post Contract with America Poll, January 1995. [distributor], 2006-11-30. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03833.v1

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Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Restrictions

This data collection may not be used for any purpose other than statistical reporting and analysis. Use of these data to learn the identity of any person or establishment is prohibited.

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Time Period(s)

1995-01

Date of Collection

1995-01-03 -- 1995-01-04

Data Collection Notes

  1. (1) Additional information about sampling, interviewing, weighting, and sampling error may be found in the codebook. (2) The data are provided as an SPSS portable file. (3) 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. (4) 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.

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Sample

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.

Universe

Persons aged 18 and over living in households with telephones in the contiguous 48 United States.

Unit(s) of Observation

individuals

Data Source

telephone interviews

Data Type(s)

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Original Release Date

2004-06-10

Version History

2018-02-15 The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented. The previous citation was:
  • ABC News/The Washington Post. ABC NEWS/WASHINGTON POST CONTRACT WITH AMERICA POLL, JANUARY 1995. ICPSR version. Radnor, PA: Chilton Research Services [producer], 1995. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2006-11-30. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03833.v1

2006-11-30 SAS, SPSS, and Stata setup files have been added to this data collection.

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Notes