Poll: Nearly six in 10 Hispanics in California intend to vote to re-elect Barack Obama in the November 2012 presidential balloting, almost four times the number who support Mitt Romney

The survey by The Field Poll indicated that 57% of Latinos back Obama, 15% plan to cast a ballot for Romney and 28% are either undecided or do not plan to vote for either of the two main candidates. California's Latino voters, who now comprise about one quarter of the electorate, favor Obama nearly four to one. Latinos are a main sub-group that is contributing heavily to Obama's preference advantage in California - a state with 55 electoral votes, the most nationally - along with African-Americans, Asians, independents, women and younger and middle-age voters. Non-Hispanic whites in California, however, narrowly favor Romney by a margin of 44% to 41%, with 15% undecided. Overall, Obama has a 16 percentage-point lead (48% to 32%) over the Republican in California with just over five months until Election Day. The proportion of California voters with a favorable perception of Obama has fallen over the past four years, from 62% when he was a candidate in May 2008 to 53% at present, while the proportion who view him unfavorably has climbed from 29% to 38% in that same time frame. Between June 2011 and May 2012, the proportion with a positive view of Romney rose two points to 40%, although the percentage of California voters holding a negative opinion of the Republican rose 10 points to 44%. The Field Poll, however, showed less Hispanic support for Obama in California than another voter-preference survey released recently by the Public Policy Institute of California, which found that two out of every three registered Latino voters support Obama's re-election bid. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, Latinos voted for Obama by a margin of more than two to one (67% to 31%) over Republican John McCain in the 2008 presidential election, while in California the Democrat carried 74% of the Hispanic vote.