Journal Poll: Kamala Harris comfortably ahead of Donald Trump in New Mexico

SANTA FE — With less than two months until Election Day, Democrat Kamala Harris holds a sizeable advantage over Republican Donald Trump in this year’s presidential race in New Mexico, a new Journal Poll found.

About 49% of registered, likely voters surveyed in the poll said they planned to vote for Harris, while 39% said they planned to support Trump.

A smaller number of voters — about 3% — said they would vote for independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who suspended his campaign last month but is still on New Mexico’s ballot. An even smaller amount said they would back a different presidential candidate.

Of the remaining voters surveyed, roughly 7% said they had not yet decided who they would vote for in the Nov. 5 general election.

Despite some speculation New Mexico could be in play this year due to President Joe Biden’s sagging approval rating, the poll results suggest the likelihood of a similar outcome to 2020, said Brian Sanderoff, the president of Research & Polling Inc., which conducted the poll.

Biden defeated Trump in New Mexico by nearly 11 percentage points — or about 100,000 votes — in the 2020 election.

“Kamala Harris’ lead in New Mexico is nearly identical to Joe Biden’s win four years ago,” Sanderoff said.

While male voters in New Mexico were nearly split between Trump and Harris, female voters were far more likely to support Harris than the former president, the Journal Poll found.

“We do have a gender gap here in New Mexico,” Sanderoff said, while pointing out Harris could be motivating some female voters to support her.

In addition, and mirroring a national trend, there was a significant divide by education level, as voters with a college or graduate degree said they would vote for Harris by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. In contrast, voters without a college degree were more likely to support Trump.

New Mexico has trended increasingly Democratic in recent presidential elections, as former President George W. Bush was the last Republican to win the state’s five electoral votes in 2004.

Neither Trump nor Harris, the current U.S. vice president who was nominated by Democrats last month after Biden withdrew from this year’s race, have announced plans for campaign stops in New Mexico in the run-up to November.

However, both candidates have traveled to the state in the past, with Trump holding a 2019 rally in Rio Rancho while president and two 2016 campaign events.

Harris, for her part, traveled to Albuquerque in October 2022 to speak about abortion rights and bolster Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s re-election bid.

Lujan Grisham said in a televised interview this week she would welcome a Harris campaign stop in New Mexico this fall, saying, “Of course New Mexico would love to have the vice president here.”

Regional views and favorability ratings

The Journal Poll found voters in the Albuquerque metro area and the traditional Democratic stronghold of northern New Mexico were much more likely to support Harris than Trump.

While Trump enjoyed a nearly 2-to-1 advantage over Harris in the state’s more conservative east side, that was not enough to offset the vice president’s edge in New Mexico’s more populous areas, Sanderoff said.

The poll also found Anglo voters were nearly split between the two leading presidential candidates, while Hispanic voters tended to favor Harris.

However, Trump’s 36% support level among Hispanics was higher than some Republican candidates have received in recent New Mexico statewide elections.

“Trump does have a following among Hispanics, but Harris still has a very comfortable lead among Hispanic voters in New Mexico,” Sanderoff said.

Another trouble spot for Trump could be his performance among self-described moderate voters. Among such voters, 68% said they planned to vote for Harris, while 20% said they intended to vote for Trump, the Journal Poll found.

Harris’ lead over Trump in the Journal Poll was also reflected in voters’ favorability views on the two candidates.

About 53% of voters surveyed said they had either very favorable or somewhat favorable views of Harris, while 40% said they had unfavorable views of the vice president.

In contrast, 42% of voters expressed favorable views of Trump, compared with 56% of voters surveyed who said they had somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable views of him.

Among independent voters, or those unaffiliated with a political party, 65% said they had an unfavorable opinion of Trump.

Poll methodology

The Journal Poll is based on a statewide random sample of 532 voters who cast ballots in the 2020 and/or 2022 general election, and a sample of adults who registered to vote since December 2022 and who said they are likely to vote in the upcoming election.

The sample was stratified by race and county and weighted by age, gender education level, and party affiliation based on traditional voting patterns in New Mexico general elections, to ensure a more representative sample.

The poll was conducted from Sept. 6 through Sept. 13, excluding the evening of Sept. 10 (due to the presidential debate). The voter sample has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points. The margin of error grows for subsamples.

All interviews were conducted by live, professional interviewers, based in Albuquerque, with multiple callbacks to households that did not initially answer the phone.

Both cellphone numbers (88%) and landlines (12%) of likely general election voters were used.