Question: If the 2006 election for United States Senator were being held today, would you vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic candidate or would you vote for John Spencer, the Republican candidate? CANDIDATES’ NAMES WERE ROTATED2

Hillary Clinton (D) 59%
John Spencer (R) 27%
Someone Else 2%
Won't Vote 3%
Don't Know 8%

About this Poll
The latest New York Times/CBS News poll of New York State is based on telephone interviews conducted Sept. 24-27 with 904 adults throughout the state. Of those, 734 said they were registered to vote. Interviews were conducted in either English or Spanish.

The sample of telephone exchanges called was selected by a computer from a complete list of exchanges across the state.

The exchanges were chosen to ensure that each region of the state was represented in proportion to its population. For each exchange, the telephone numbers were formed by random digits, thus permitting access to listed and unlisted numbers alike. Within each household, one adult was designated by a random procedure to be the respondent for the survey.

The results have been weighted to take account of household size and the number of telephone lines into the residence, and to adjust for variations in the sample relating to region of the state, race, Hispanic origin, sex, marital status, age and education.

In addition, the questions about voting preference if the 2006 elections were being held today were based on “likely voters.” Likely voters were identified by registration, intention to vote, interest in the campaign, past voting behavior, and length of residence at address, further weighted so that those who live in New York City make up 30 percent of the entire state, which is the city’s typical share of total ballots cast on Election Day.

In theory, in 19 cases out of 20 the results based on such samples will differ by no more than three percentage points in either direction from what would have been obtained by seeking out all adult residents of New York State.