How the poll on homelessness was conducted

This poll was conducted by Hart Research, based in Washington, D.C., from Oct. 15-22, 2019, by telephone among 901 registered voters in Los Angeles County. Overall, 32% of respondents were contacted on a landline and 68% were contacted on a cell phone. The questionnaire was developed in partnership with the Los Angeles Times, the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and the Los Angeles Business Council Institute. All respondents were selected from the California voter file. Interviews were conducted in either English or Spanish, depending on the individual respondent’s preference. The survey has an overall margin of error of 3.2 percentage points in either direction at the 95% confidence level. Sample tolerances for subgroups are larger.

The completed interviews include 269 Latino respondents. The survey also conducted extra interviews to achieve 107 completed interviews among Asian Americans and 125 among African Americans. In the final data, the racial groups have been weighted back to reflect their proper proportions of the L.A. County electorate. The survey set quotas to achieve the proper geographic, demographic, and partisan distribution; once the interviews were completed, Hart Research applied minimal weights to geographic region, party registration, age, gender, and education in order to ensure that the sample reflects the overall universe of registered voters in L.A. County.