This study is part of a time-series collection of national surveys fielded continuously since 1948. The election studies are designed to present data on Americans' social backgrounds, enduring political predispositions, social and political values, perceptions and evaluations of groups and candidates, opinions on questions of public policy, and participation in political life. Four areas were targeted for special attention: new measurement of party identification, the measurement of voter attitudes concerning issues of public policy, new content concerning public perceptions of and responses to political leadership, and the exploration of social networks in the crystallization of the vote choice. Special-interest and topical content includes questions on the proposed 30% tax cut, new questions on campaign contributions and party identification, new retrospective and prospective evaluations of the economy, new issue scales on defense spending and U.S. foreign policy toward Russia, a new abortion question, and the introduction to the ANES time series of 'traits and affects' measures of perception and response regarding political leadership. Besides representing a traditional pre-post election study, the two waves of the 1980 ANES Time Series Study were simultaneously components of a larger project consisting of 8 integrated survey data collections carried out throughout 1980 and scheduled at strategically chosen time periods in the course of the election year, along with vote validation and contextual data. Other studies in the project included the four-wave 1980 Major Panel Study [ICPSR 35120], and a 2-wave minor panel that is available only in the ANES 1980 Merged File [ICPSR 35119], which combines into a single dataset all of the ANES data collected in 1980. The National Election Studies Board established a 1980 Presidential Elections Committee that consisted of three Board members (Merrill Shanks, John Jackson, David Sears) and three additional scholars (Richard S. Brody, Jack Dennis, Donald R. Kinder). This committee, along with the Center for Political Studies project staff, was responsible for the planning of the year-long study. The Pre- and Post-Election Surveys file contains the traditional election survey data. Contextual measures are provided along with the survey data, and include election returns, interest group ratings of incumbents, and Federal Election Commission campaign contribution data.

Multistage representative cross-section. The sample design of the 1980 ANES is not typical of the time series. Like that of the 1978 ANES, it employed a sampling frame of congressional districts, with primary areas comprising 108 districts selected in the first stage of the multi-area probability sample developed in 1978. As in all time series studies, however, the total sample was drawn to constitute a representative national cross-section, including an average of 15 interviews per district. Interviews were conducted prior to the November 4 elections, beginning September 7 using a pre-election instrument averaging 70 minutes. Post-election interviews averaged 60 minutes and were administered November 5,1980-February 7, 1981.

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: Performed consistency checks.; Standardized missing values.; Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..

face-to-face interview Variables V801197-V801208 are Vote Validation (individual voter record) variables. Variables V805001-V805225 are Contextual variables. For further information please see the ANES Data Center Web site.

Response Rates: The sample included 2,249 eligible persons, among whom 1,614 completed pre-election interviews and 1,408 were subsequently re-interviewed in the post-election phase.

Citizens of voting age living in private households.

American National Election Study (ANES) Series

No weights are included in this dataset.

Datasets: DS1: Dataset