The 2000 American National Election Study was conducted by the Center for Political Studies of the Institute for Social Research, at the University of Michigan. This study is part of a time-series collection of national surveys fielded continuously since 1952. 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.
The 2000 National Election Study entailed both a pre-election interview and a post-election re-interview. A freshly drawn cross section of the electorate was taken to yield 1807 cases. The 65 minute pre election survey went into the field September 5th, nine weeks before election day. The 65 minute post election study, unique to the time series in that no president elect was named for several days, went into the field the day after the election, November 8th, and remained in the field until December 18th.
Because of the study's most innovative feature, a carefully designed mode experiment, the data represent two presidential studies in 2000, side by side. The core study preserves our past commitment to probability area sampling and face to face interviewing: 1006 respondents interviewed prior to the election and 694 were re-interviewed face to face after the election. Supporting the core study, we used the efficiencies of RDD sampling and telephone interviewing: 801 respondents were interviewed by phone prior to the election and 862 respondents were interviewed by phone after the election. As such, the experiment will define sharply the differences between the two modes and allow us to learn what a shift to telephone interviewing will mean for the NES time-series.