In March 2025, NORC at the University of Chicago fielded a 12-question poll among a representative sample of Californians in three congressional districts in California to assess attitudes about Medi-Cal, Covered California, and possible reductions to federal funding for both programs. The poll was conducted in congressional districts 22 (in the Central Valley), 40 (in Orange County), and 41 (in the Inland Empire region).
Explore key poll findings from each of the three districts:
In March 2025, CHCF released a statewide version of the same 12-question poll. Explore those results.
Survey Methodology
This survey was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago on behalf of the California Health Care Foundation. The survey was funded by the California Health Care Foundation.
Data were collected using a multimode address-based sampling (ABS) approach that allows residents to complete the interview via the web or with an NORC telephone interviewer. The sampling frame is based on an extract of the USPS Delivery Sequence File (DSF). The DSF provides sample coverage of approximately 97% of the US household population. Those excluded from the sample include people with P.O. Box-only addresses, some addresses not listed in the USPS DSF and some newly constructed dwellings. Addresses were stratified by congressional district.
All sampled households were mailed a bilingual (English and Spanish) letter with a visible $1 pre-incentive, inviting them to complete the survey either online using a unique PIN or via telephone by calling a toll-free number. A bilingual reminder mailing was mailed to all sampled households six days after the initial letter was mailed. Each mailing was addressed to: [City] Resident. There is no within household selection for households with multiple adults.
Interviews for this survey were conducted between March 17 through March 25, 2025, with 1,350 adults age 18 and older in CA Congressional Districts 22, 40, and 41. Interviews were conducted online and over the phone, with 97 people completing via telephone and 1,253 completing via web. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish, depending on the respondent’s preference. Respondents were offered a monetary incentive ($10) for completing the survey.
The overall weighted response rate is 4.5%. The overall margin of sampling error is +/- 4.7 percentage points at the 95% confidence level, including the design effect. The margin of sampling error may be higher for subgroups.
Sampling error is only one of many potential sources of error and there may be other unmeasured error in this or any other survey.
Quality assurance checks were conducted to ensure data quality. In total, six interviews were removed for nonresponse to at least 50% of the questions asked or for completing the survey in less than one-third the median interview time for the full sample. These interviews were excluded from the data file prior to weighting.
Once the sample has been selected and fielded, and all the study data have been collected and made final, a poststratification process is used to adjust for any survey nonresponse as well as any noncoverage or under and oversampling resulting from the study-specific sample design.
Poststratification variables included age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, and household size. Weighting variables were obtained from the 2023 American Community Survey. The weighted data reflect the California population of adults age 18 and older in congressional districts 22, 40, and 41.
For more information, email info@norc.org.
