Journal Poll: New Mexicans are the most worried about inflation and crime

What’s the biggest issue New Mexicans face in their daily lives?

Inflation. The cost of living, gas, housing — it’s all just too expensive.

Not too far behind that, most New Mexico residents’ top concern is crime.

These are responses from a new Journal poll of voters asking of them their biggest issue or concern.

No single issue took precedence by a landslide. A majority of voters mentioned one of six issues as their top concern: inflation, crime, (K-12) education, weak economy/jobs/wages, illegal immigration/border security and homelessness.

In the poll, 18% of voters said inflation is the biggest issue, 16% said it’s crime, 9% said it’s poor education, 8% said it’s a weak economy, 8% said it’s illegal immigration and border security, and 7% said it’s homelessness.

Brian Sanderoff, president of Research & Polling Inc., which conducted the poll, said “this is just a way of getting a person’s top of mind, gut feeling (of) what’s the biggest thing. It doesn’t mean those other things aren’t of value.”

He noted that of the top five issues, two are related to the economy and two are related to crime.

Sanderoff said while the 18% and 16% difference between inflation and the economy isn’t that big, , more voters are concerned about inflation because it impacts more people directly than crime does.

“Everyone is impacted by the cost of living and cost of housing, cost of gasoline,” he said. “Crime is something that many people are directly impacted by, but many people are not. ... Many people are just seeing it on TV news and reading about in the paper.”

Voters in the Albuquerque metro area are the most worried about crime, according to the poll, with 20% of people saying that’s the biggest issue. In contrast, only 6% of voters in eastern New Mexico said that’s the priority concern.

Also, only 14% of Albuquerque metro voters mark inflation as their top concern, much less than other areas of the state that had 18-24% of people most concerned about it.

Ideologically, voters leaning conservative, moderate and liberal largely agreed that inflation and crime are the top issues. The poll results found 17% of Democrats and 20% of Republicans thought that inflation was the biggest concern, while 16% of Democrats and 19% of Republicans said crime was the biggest issue.

However, more stark differences in partisanship came from those who chose illegal immigration or border security as their top issue. In the poll, 17% of Republicans compared to 2% of Democrats marked that as New Mexico residents’ biggest issue.

Sanderoff said voters’ opinions on education are often overshadowed by how they perceive crime and the economy. That doesn’t mean people don’t care about education, he added.

“There have been some decades where education is on top, but only when when crime was down in the minds of the voters and the economy was strong,” he said.

A few other concerns made the list, including poverty, abortion, health care reform and gun control, though only 2-3% of voters named any of those issues as their biggest concerns.

Meanwhile, 5% of those responding decided not to say or didn’t know what their biggest issue was.

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, 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 Sept. 6-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.