by Jeremy Hunt
Daily Lobo
New Mexico is dominated by Democrats, but that hasn't stopped Republicans from holding the 1st Congressional District for the last 37 years, said Brian Sanderoff, president of Research and Polling Inc.
"There's something special about the race for Congress," he said.
Sanderoff and UNM political science professor Lonna Atkeson spoke about last week's election to about 40 people at the Albuquerque Press Women's luncheon on Monday at the Sheraton Uptown at 2600 Louisiana Blvd. N.E.
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Atkeson said she is focusing her research on the administering of elections, because voter confidence validates the results.
"We need to be confident in our voting administration in New Mexico," she said. "In part, it was such a concern, because we're the only state to go from electronic voting back to the paper ballot."
She said 86 percent of voters were confident their vote would be counted.
"That's still a high number of people who are not confident," she said.
Sanderoff's firm provided statistical information on the last election for the Albuquerque Journal and other news media.
He said he studied the statistics to see why registered Democrats vote for Republicans in the 1st Congressional District, even though they elect Democrats to most other offices in the state.
Forty-five percent of the registered voters in the 1st Congressional District are Democrats, 35 percent are Republicans and 20 percent are independent, decline to state or other, he said.
There have been three incumbents in the district since 1969, and all three have been Republican. None of the incumbents have been voted out of office.
Because New Mexico is a diverse state, people are open to voting for both parties, Sanderoff said.
"New Mexico is known as a swing state," he said. "That's why we get so much national
attention."
Sanderoff said Republican incumbent Heather Wilson has been vulnerable in two of the five races she ran in. She was vulnerable in her first race because she was a new candidate, but that may have helped her gain undecided voters, he said.
"The unknown candidate is likely to pick up the lion's share of the undecided," he said.
She was vulnerable in this year's election because of the mood of the country, which wanted a change from the Republican-controlled Congress, he said.
"It takes a high-quality candidate and the mood to cause a shift," he said.
Sanderoff said Republicans are good at organizing and capitalizing on alternative voting methods.
"Absentee has always been owned by the Republicans," he said.
UNM law professor Sherri Burr, who attended the event, said it's important to know the influences on voters.
"It helps to understand why people vote the way they do if you want to support a ballot initiative," she said.
On Election Day, exit polls showed former Attorney General Patricia Madrid with a 4 percentage point lead in Bernalillo County over Wilson, he said.
The polls show Wilson got 15 percent of the Democrat vote, while Madrid got 8 percent of the smaller Republican population. Wilson got 33 percent of the Hispanic vote, which usually goes to Democrats, Sanderoff said.
Sanderoff said polls have little impact on the way people vote before the election.
"The biggest influence of polls is the ability of the candidate to raise money," he said.
Sanderoff said Wilson was ahead of Madrid from the middle of August to Sept. 20.
Madrid was ahead of Wilson for all of October, but things took a turn when the Republicans found ammunition to use against Madrid, he said.
"Then, the debate hit," he said. "It was the commercials that capitalized on the debate."
Atkeson said the political advertisements weren't a deciding factor in the race. People have been voting for Wilson for four elections, and it's hard for them to vote for someone else, she said.
"That means you had to get these people who've voted for Wilson over and over again to change their vote," she said. "That's a pretty big change for a voter to make."
