Summary
This study is part of a time-series collection of national surveys fielded continuously since 1948, and 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. Content areas targeted for special attention were respondents' party identification, their attitudes regarding public policy issues, public perceptions of, and responses to political leadership, as well as the exploration of social networks in the crystallization of the vote choice. The Major Panel File (P1-P4), presents a year-long four-wave panel. The timing of the waves corresponds to events in the election year cycle. The panel began in late January 1980 (P-1) as a national cross-section of 1,008 cases, and interviewing ended before the New Hampshire primary on February 24, 1980. Respondents from the first wave were re-interviewed in June (P-2) immediately after the last set of primary elections that were held on June 3, 1980. The third panel interview (P-3) was conducted during the month of September 1980. The fourth and final wave (P-4) was conducted immediately after the general election and includes re-interviews with respondents who did not participate in Wave 3. Wave 4 was a fifteen-minute telephone interview, covering mainly the respondents' vote preferences and participation in the election campaign. Contextual information is included in the dataset.Cf: http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR35120.v2