Obama lead in New Mexico declining

PPP's newest New Mexico poll finds the race for President there getting a lot more competitive. Barack Obama continues to lead but his advantage is down to 5 points at 49-44, a far cry from the leads of 14 and 15 points he had on our previous two polls of the state.

The big difference between now and April comes with Democrats. Previously Obama was winning them 85-12 but now that lead is down to 73-21. New Mexico is a state, like North Carolina and Pennsylvania, where any chance at victory for Romney is going to require winning over a significant number of conservative Democrats. Right now he's doing a pretty decent job of that.

New Mexico still looks like a lean Obama state, but a surprise choice by Mitt Romney of Susana Martinez as his running mate could make the state a toss up. With her on the ticket Obama's lead drops all the way down to 48-47. That's a testament to Martinez's appeal with Democrats. She would reduce Obama's lead with them even further to 70-25. There aren't a lot of potential VP choices who would make a big difference in their home states, but there also aren't a lot with a 56/34 approval spread.

Gary Johnson's potential impact on the race in New Mexico just keeps on declining. In December he was polling at 23%. By April that was down to 15% and now we find him at only 13%. Interestingly he hurts Obama a little bit more than Romney, pulling the President's lead down to 42-38. He gets 24% of the independent vote, and a lot of his support is coming from more Democratic leaning independents. Voters in the state are closely divided on Johnson with 39% rating him favorably and 40% unfavorably.

Obama's net approval has dropped 9 points since we last surveyed New Mexico from +9 at 53/44 in April to now break even with 48% of voters approving of him and 48% disapproving. Romney's favorability is up a net 13 points from its previous -22, although he's still on negative ground at -9 with 41% of voters rating him positively and 50% expressing an unfavorable view of him.

New Mexico makes it five battleground states in the last two weeks where PPP has found opposition to Obama's new immigration policy. 41% of voters support it with 46% against. Voters also narrowly disagree with the Supreme Court's decision on health care with 42% agreeing with it to 46% who dissent.

Obama probably doesn't need to worry too much about losing New Mexico but its increased competitiveness is certainly another sign that he's not as strong as he was last time around.

Full results here

Comments

[Jay]

Until someone else verified, this seems like an outlier. When's the last time NM polled this closely?

[Tom Johnson]

With all due respect, this is not a valid poll. There's no way Romney gets above 35% with Hispanics in New Mexico. It's simply not going to happen. I suspect there were probably no surveys conducted in Spanish here. English speaking hispanics tend to be more Republican.

[Jeff]

polls like this happen sometimes. I suspect that it's a lot less close than this poll states. BTW vice presidents rarely ever decide elections.

[3rjc]

This is a good sign. All polls seem to be trending in the right direction.

CBS/NYT just released a poll showing Romney leading 47/46 with a D+6 sample (2008 was a record turnout year for D's at +7), so that sample skew is probably still high. When you consider GOP overwhelming lead in voter intensity, Independents all breaking for Romney in every poll, and the built in advantage for the GOP when the samples switch from registered to likely voters, signs are starting to point to a GOP wipeout.

[Michael]

LOL.. So to the authors of the comments above. I suppose the PPP polls that any average human could consider calling "outliers" due to their heavy Democratic lean really are fair and accurate polls?

Mmmhmmmm... We saw how accurate PPP was in Wisconsin in June.

[Annabellep]

Haha! Comments on this are hilarious. There's a whole class of Romney Democrats being born these days. I'm one of them. I started as ABO, but now that I know Romney's record, I'm fully on board with him being the best man for the job hands down.

https://www.facebook.com/romneydemocrats2012

[Mike]

For a context of 2014 I understand not why you reject to poll the strongest potential candidates. Now the poll is done and unfortunately we know not how would be the best what a Democrat can do against S Martinez.

She would defeat every Democrat in the state? or she would be defeated vs an enough strong Democratic candidate?

Maybe we know it the next time.

[MootsaGootsa]

Don't count Gary Johnson out of the race. This is a three man race and Johnson is starting to get national ranking. See the top secret tip for all poker players at

[Obama 2012]

re: Annabellep

80 Romney Democrats... in the entire country. That seems about right.

~~~

re: eric

GOP wipe-out? 538 still sees Obama as a 67% favorite (81% _now) and Intrade has Obama at 57% (Romney now under 40%.)

[John]

How much do you want to bet that the people who think this poll is an outlier thought the Iowa poll with Obama +10 was a true representation? Republicans can definitely win this kind of Hispanic support, so this is not at all unreasonable. McCain won 30% of their vote, Bush won 44%. With republican Hispanics in politics now (govs Susana Martinez and Brian Sandoval and senator Marco Rubio) and no solutions to issues from Obama, maybe they are finally starting to see the light and switch. They are more conservative than liberal ideologically, the democrats just string them along with promises of immigration reform but never deliver on those promises.