Journal Poll: Martin Heinrich keeps double-digit lead over Nella Domenici in U.S. Senate race

SANTA FE — Martin Heinrich is drawing on strong support from female voters to hold off a challenge from Nella Domenici in the race for the U.S. Senate seat he has held since 2013, a new Journal poll found.

Heinrich, a Democrat and former Albuquerque city councilor, received the backing of 51% of voters surveyed, while 40% said they would vote for Domenici, a Republican who has pumped more than $2 million into her campaign in the form of loans.

The 11-point lead for Heinrich in the poll is slightly smaller than his advantage in a poll conducted last month. That one showed him up 50%-38% over Domenici.

But the GOP challenger, the daughter of late former U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, has struggled to make up ground against the incumbent amid a steady stream of attacks about her stance on abortion.

Domenici has said she would not support a federal abortion ban, saying she believes abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.”

However, Heinrich said during a recent televised debate on KOAT TV that Domenici would, if elected, likely vote in the U.S. Senate for a Republican floor leader who supports a nationwide abortion ban.

That prompted a sharp retort from Domenici, who described the remark as “the most sexist comment you could ever hear from a United States senator.”

The two candidates have also sparred over border security, crime, inflation and their respective commitments to New Mexico.

Domenici has sought to portray Heinrich as a “radical” Democrat who is out of touch with most state residents’ day-to-day struggles.

“My name still carries a huge amount of bipartisan respect,” Domenici said during the recent debate, evoking the legacy of her father.

But Heinrich said he meets frequently with all types of New Mexicans, rebuffing criticism from Domenici that many business executives have a hard time landing meetings with him. Heinrich also says his family is fully invested in Albuquerque, as he and his wife no longer own a home in Maryland they bought in 2013.

“I come home almost every weekend, because this is the place that makes me happy,” Heinrich said during the recent debate.

For her part, Domenici has defended her New Mexico roots despite living on the East Coast for years, saying she and her husband have owned a home in Santa Fe for 20 years and helped launch a state charter school program. State voting records show Domenici first voted in New Mexico elections in June 2020.

Brian Sanderoff, the president of Albuquerque-based Research & Polling Inc., which conducted the poll, said Heinrich is facing a tougher reelection campaign than he did in 2018, when he easily defeated two general election opponents.

“Nella Domenici is running a formidable race, but there still is a wide gap between the two candidates,” Sanderoff said.

“It’s hard to unseat a two-term Democrat U.S. senator in a blue-leaning state,” he added.

Gender gap and regional views

As in this year’s presidential race, the new poll found female voters are significantly more likely than male voters to support the Democratic candidate in the U.S. Senate contest.

A total of 54% of women voters surveyed said they planned to vote for Heinrich, or already had voted for him, while 37% said they planned to vote for Domenici.

Heinrich also led his opponent among male voters, though the split was much narrower.

“We definitely have a gender gap, but Heinrich is ahead among both male and female voters,” Sanderoff said.

There was also a sizable difference in voters’ views on the two candidates by education level, with voters who have a college or graduate degree backing Heinrich by a large margin, the new Journal poll found.

For her part, Domenici had relatively strong support for a GOP candidate among New Mexico Hispanic voters, a group she has targeted in this year’s campaign.

She also had strong leads over Heinrich in eastern New Mexico and in the state’s northwest corner.

But Heinrich held a commanding advantage in the Albuquerque Metro area and in traditionally Democratic north central New Mexico, leading Domenici by wide margins in those regions.

While the new poll found Domenici getting slightly more support from Democratic voters than Heinrich is receiving from GOP voters, the difference was not enough to offset that there are more registered Democrats than Republicans in New Mexico.

In addition, Sanderoff said, there appears to be low levels of ticket-splitting, meaning most voters plan to cast their votes for candidates of the same party in the presidential and U.S. Senate races.

Poll methodology

The Journal poll is based on a statewide random sample of 1,024 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 Oct. 10-18 excluding the late afternoon of Oct. 14 (due to the U.S. Senate debate). The voter sample has a margin of error of plus- or minus-3.1 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 (89%) and landlines (11%) of likely general election voters were used.