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. In addition to the core content, this dataset also includes topics like women's liberation, racial attitudes, economic attitudes, payment of federal income tax, feelings about the quality of life, and various cultural attitudes. As a result of findings from previous ANES studies, the general themes of trust in government, alienation, and efficacy were emphasized in an attempt to determine the causes of the observed decrease in public support of the political system. Besides being a stand-alone time series study, this dataset also represents the first wave in a three-wave data collection that continued with the ANES 1974 Time Series Study (ICPSR 7355) and the 1976 ANES Time Series Study (ICPSR 7381). The full panel file of data from these years, the ANES 1972-1976 Merged File (ICPSR 7607), also includes some cases not represented in the time series studies. To maximize the number of questions asked in 1972, two forms of the interview were developed, and each was administered to half of the respondents in both the pre- and the post-election waves. Each half-sample of respondents assigned to a specific questionnaire version also constitutes a cross-national sample, representative of the study population, so that the two sub-samples may be used together, or separately for analysis purposes. The two forms contain approximately 80 percent of the same items, while 20 percent are unique questions. In addition, in the post-election wave, 57 Form I respondents were re-designated Form III, and 37 Form II respondents were re-designated Form IV, because they were interviewed using a mail questionnaire that contained most, but not all, of the questions included in the face-to-face versions of the post-election questionnaire. Demographic variables include sex, age, race and marital status, number of children in household, level of education, occupation and employment status, religious preference.