Question:
If the election for U.S. Senate were being held today and the candidates were United States Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat, and Businesswoman and Nonprofit Executive Elizabeth Emken, the Republican, for whom would you vote?

About this Poll
Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, in conjunction with American Viewpoint, conducted this survey on behalf of the University of Southern California Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the Los Angeles Times.

These findings are based on a random sample survey of 1,504 (1,504 weighted) registered voters in the state of California, conducted from October 15th to 21st, 2012. Interviews were conducted by telephone using live interviewers from Interviewing Services of America. Voters were randomly selected from a list of registered voters statewide and reached on a landline or cell phone depending on the number they designated on their voter registration. Thirteen percent of this sample was reached on a cell phone. Up to five attempts were made to reach and interview each randomly selected voter.

The study includes an oversample of Latino registered voters, with the total number of Latino voters interviewed at 486 (301 weighted). All interviews among known Latinos were carried out via telephone by bilingual Latino interviewers, and conducted in the preferred language of the survey respondent, English or Spanish. Overall, 37 percent of interviews among the known Latino sample were conducted in Spanish and 63 percent in English. The technique of using fully bilingual interviewers yields higher response and cooperation rates and is greatly preferred because it does not terminate calls with Spanish-language households and require a callback.

Upon completion of all interviewing, the results were weighted to bring the Latino oversample population into line with the racial and ethnic composition of registered voters in California. The data were weighted to reflect the total population of registered voters throughout the state, balancing on regional and demographic characteristics for gender, age, race, and party registration according to known census estimates and voter file projections.

The maximum sampling error for the overall sample of 1,504 registered voters is +/- 2.9 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level. Margin of error for subgroups is higher. The margin of error for the 486 Latino sample respondents is +/- 4.9 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.