As the debate rages on the East Coast about quarantining health workers who have treated Ebola patients, a new poll shows that Californians are unconcerned about being exposed to the virus.

Forty-six percent of California voters are “not at all worried” that they or a family member will be exposed to Ebola, and another 24 percent said they are “not too worried,” according to results from the latest USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll.

Just 18 percent of Californians said they are “somewhat worried,” and 12 percent are “very worried,” the poll showed.

Among Latino voters, 52 percent said they were “not too worried” or “not at all worried” about being exposed to Ebola. Twenty-six percent of Latino voters said they were “somewhat worried” and 22 percent are “very worried,” according to the poll.

Geographically, psychologically apart

“California is both geographically and psychologically distanced from the rest of the country. If there were an Ebola case on the West Coast, I suspect the level of concern would be much greater,” said Dan Schnur, director of the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll and executive director of the Unruh Institute of Politics of USC. “But voters also show they are fairly confident in the infrastructure for dealing with an outbreak, from their local health care providers up to the federal level.”

If there were an Ebola case on the West Coast, I suspect the level of concern would be much greater.

Dan Schnur

Indeed, more that two-thirds of California voters (68 percent) said they have a “great deal or fair” amount of confidence in their local hospitals and doctors to deal with the Ebola virus, as opposed to 28 percent who have not much or no confidence in them, the poll showed.

Fifty-nine percent of Californians said they had confidence in the federal government to deal with the virus, as opposed to 39 percent who said they had little or no confidence.

Confident in local responders

Similarly, 6 in 10 California voters said they had confidence in local first responders — including health officials and law enforcement — as opposed to 35 percent who said they had little or no confidence in them to deal with Ebola.

A strong majority of Californians — 56 percent — said they had confidence in state government officials to deal with Ebola, as opposed to 39 percent saying they had little or no confidence in them.

The latest USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll, the largest statewide survey of registered voters, was conducted Oct. 22-29 and includes a significant oversample of Latino voters as well as one of the most robust cellphone samples in the state. The full sample of 1,537 registered voters has a margin of error of +/- 2.9 percentage points.

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