2024 Leaner Deep Dive and Forecast: New Mexico (5 Electoral Votes)

Topic: 2024 Election Forecast

NEW MEXICO

Basic Election Facts

2024 Electoral Votes: 5

Population (2020 Census): 2,117,522 (+240,133 since 2010)

Likely Population at 2024 Election: 2,150,000

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Partisanship

Governor Party: Democrat

State House Majority: Democrat

State House Majority: Democrat

U.S. House Delegation: 3 Democrats

U.S. Senate Delegation: 2 Democrats

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Ethnic Demographics (2020 census)

White: 36.5%

Latino: 47.7%

Native: 10.0%

Other: 5.8%

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Presidential History since 1932

Times Republican: 9

Last: George W. Bush, 2004, +0.8%

Times Democrat: 14

Last: Joe Biden, 2020, +10.8%

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Presidential Election Characteristics

·      New Mexico is one of the least white states in America, ranking ahead of only California and Hawaii for percentage of non-Hispanic white population.  Whites were a slim majority in the 1990 census, held a plurality in the 2000 census, and have since been surpassed by Hispanics 47.7% to 36.5% in the latest census.  Additionally, 10% of the state is Native American.  The state became substantially less Republican amid this demographic change but is beginning to come rightward with assimilation and coalition shifting.

·      Republican strength is found primarily in the state’s southeastern quadrant, with several oil-rich counties with political dynamics resembling West Texas known to pour on massive GOP margins.

·      Three Democrat-run counties inflict major damage on Republican hopes – Bernalillo (metro Albuquerque), Dona Ana (metro Las Cruces and New Mexico State University), and Santa Fe.  They are augmented by smaller, desperately poor Latino-majority counties, or counties with large populations of Native Americans.  Bernalillo (34.7%), Dona Ana (8.9%), and Santa Fe (8.9%) counties accounted for slightly more than half the ballot count in New Mexico in 2020 and easily overpowered a big Trump surge in the southeast. Rapidly growing and competitive Sandoval County, when added to the “Big 3,” makes more than 60% of the vote.

Looking Back

New Mexico is perhaps the clearest case study into the impact of rapid demographic change on an electorate.  The state backed every GOP presidential nominee from 1968 through 1988, then went for Clinton twice and then Al Gore, but with no race wider than 8.6% (including Bush-Gore decided by just 366 votes in 2000).  In the 2000s decade, Latinos overtook non-Hispanic whites for the highest share of population, and in 2008, Barack Obama won a 15.1% blowout over John McCain in a national landslide.

This has less to do about pigmentation (see demographics of Texas) than it does about income.  New Mexico is one of the poorest states in the country, with a fifth of its citizens living in poverty.  A desperately poor, government-dependent minority population is a recipe for more Democrat votes, and that is exactly what happened in the late 2000s.  Things tightened up a little bit after that blowout, with New Mexico electing a Republican governor and Trump finishing just 8.2% behind Clinton, although Gary Johnson did a lot of the heavy lifting in 2016.

Trump wound up finishing 16,660 votes ahead of Clinton’s winning total in 2020, though when I accommodate for returning third-party voters from four years prior, I wind up shy of a Trump victory, but not by a lot!  Despite a 1.6% statewide GOP voter registration trend going into 2020, Biden shot past Trump’s new mark and finished well ahead of Barack Obama’s 2008 record, getting most of his bonus ballots out of Bernalillo (estimate 27,757), Sandoval, Santa Fe, and Dona Ana Counties.

My numbers suggest a race within 2% was much more likely, but a slew of midstream election alterations upheld by the New Mexico Supreme Court saw mail-ballot applications mailed to every registration, which began ramping up in 2020 thanks to state Democrats putting Automatic Voter Registration into law.  Naturally, not only are the Democrat “Big 3” counties bloated with obvious ballot stuffing, the counties with large Native populations on reservations are too – San Juan and McKinley Counties in the northwest corner, for example. David and Erin Clements, key players in the election integrity world, live in Las Cruces and have done the dirty work firsthand in uncovering the massive fraud in the voter rolls not only in select southern New Mexico counties, but statewide.

Looking Forward

These assessments are important, because they largely analyze whether or not it is worth Team Trump’s energy, time, money, and resources to wade into New Mexico, which I still do not think will be one of the tipping point states on 2024’s map, although it could replace New Hampshire in a pinch if that state is sagging under the effects of Massachusite migration patterns.

Assessment

July 2, 2024

Polling and Modeling

·      538 expects Biden to carry New Mexico with 83% likelihood as of the time of this writing, and by an average of 8.1%.

·      The Economist forecast has a similar projection, giving Biden an 80% chance of winning it, but projecting only a 4% margin of victory.

·      Poll – June – 1892 Polling – Biden +2%

·      Poll – June – 1892 Polling – Three-Man Race – Biden +1%

·      Poll – June – Public Policy Polling – Biden +7%

Party Registration Data

·      Statewide

2020 Election: D+13.9% (+187,988 Democrat registration lead)

6/28/2024: D+12.0% (+161,057 Democrat registration lead)

·      Bernalillo County

2020 Election: D+19.0% (+85,184 Democrat registration lead)

6/28/2024: D+18.9% (+81,690 Democrat registration lead)

·      Dona Ana County

2020 Election: D+19.2% (+24,636 Democrat registration lead)

6/28/2024: D+17.3% (+23,260 Democrat registration lead)

·      Santa Fe County

2020 Election: D+48.7% (+52,412 Democrat registration lead)

6/28/2024: D+46.7% (+51,958 Democrat registration lead)

·      Sandoval County

2020 Election: D+8.6% (+9,081 Democrat registration lead)

6/28/2024: D+7.9% (+8,464 Democrat registration lead)

·      Rest of State (29 counties)

2020 Election: D+3.0% (+16,675 Democrat registration lead)

6/28/2024: R+0.8% (+4,315 Republican registration lead)

The best news out of that data selection, other than the 29 counties outside of the Big 3 and Sandoval taking a hard right turn, is the shift in Dona Ana County, not won by a GOP presidential nominee since 1988 and two-thirds Hispanic.  Not only is the registration index ticking toward the GOP, but it is also the only one of the four counties listed by name that is gaining GOP registrations, underscoring the Hispanic shift in the state, particularly the southern part of the state.  Traditional political analysis of voter registration by party brings the statewide margin inside 10 points by default.

Keshel Forecast

July 2, 2024

Biden +3-5%

New Mexico’s emergence into the “leaners” category is a very positive sign that Trump has massive Latino momentum, particularly enough to carry Arizona and Nevada while denting Democrat margins in other states with assimilated Latino populations.  Taking into account the registration analysis above – 32 of 33 counties statewide have a Republican registration lean from 2020, with the most momentum found in the 29 counties outside of the Big 3 and Sandoval - here is a conservative estimate for how much margin out of 2020’s 99,720-ballot deficit can be made up by Trump in 2024 based on historical trend, population and demographic data, and registration indicators.  Los Alamos County, the only county statewide with a Democrat registration lean since 2020, is the only one reflecting a backtracking in margin (whether increased margin of victory or decreased margin of defeat):

I think Trump will eat up about 20,000 in margin, give or take a few thousand, out of the 29 remaining counties, which cast roughly 2 in 5 votes statewide.  What helps make New Mexico a blue state is that many of these counties that are going to be more favorable to Trump are working off Democrat margins – some of them large margins like in Rio Arriba or McKinley Counties – thanks to the massive poverty created by left-wing policies and race grifting that happens in the minority communities to ensure fealty to Democrats.  This means the only way Trump is going to win or even come razor close in New Mexico is to compete for votes in the Big 3 plus Sandoval County.

Here are the margins in those four counties the last time a GOP nominee won them (Bush, 2004):

Bernalillo, Kerry +4.2%

Dona Ana, Kerry +3.6%

Sandoval, Bush +2.7%

Santa Fe, Kerry +43.2%

Now here is how they turned out in 2020, even as the remaining 29 counties collectively reddened:

Bernalillo, Biden +24.4%

Dona Ana, Biden +18.3%

Sandoval, Biden +8.4%

Santa Fe, Biden +53.8%

That took the four from producing a margin of 40,613 for Kerry in 2004 to 143,392 for Biden in 2020.  Trump ran a margin of +43,672 in the remaining 29 counties, almost identical to Bush’s performance in 2004, but urban vote rigging and the passage of fraud-enabling laws, like these passed in 2023, are behind much of the decline, even though the GOP has legitimate issues in the Albuquerque metro in driving up raw votes.

Trump needs to be able to work off a deficit of approximately 75-80,000 ballots in the Big 3 and Sandoval.  So where is that going to have to come from?  Starting with the worst, Santa Fe:

Santa Fe: Not won by GOP nominee since Nixon in 1972, and no Republican with more than 30% of the vote since 1988.  The good news is, it’s not growing much.  The bad news is, it is loaded with white liberals, with a Hispanic majority, though it has a very small share of native Americans.  Democrats were flat for three cycles before the ballot harvesting boom in 2020, and 4,492 net new votes is the all-time GOP record for one election (2004).  Democrat margins since 2008 have moved like this: 39,760; 35,372; 36,461; 44,201.

I think the best-case scenario is a draw here.  This type of environmental fascist, hippie, left-wing county is not fertile ground for Trump.  Let’s go with a shift of zero, which is probably wishful thinking.  This means three counties are going to have to win it for Trump, and I believe all three will be more favorable than they were in 2020.

Sandoval: Bush carried it by 2.7% in a statewide win in 2004.  It has sustained substantial growth since the 1970s as Albuquerque has expanded northward, and is generally competitive, with Obama’s 12.8% margin of victory the largest in the county since 1980.  My numbers suggest Trump should have carried it in 2020 if not for the mail-in balloting abuse.  It is safe to say I don’t see a win in New Mexico if Sandoval County goes for Biden. With a Republican voter registration lean and Trump statewide momentum evident in New Mexico, let’s call this county tilt Trump, margin almost dead even.  That would eliminate a Democrat margin of 6,000, leaving 72,370 to be made up in Bernalillo and Dona Ana Counties.

Dona Ana: Two-thirds Hispanic, border county, and in very close proximity to El Paso, Texas.  Its most troublesome characteristic is that it is home to New Mexico State University and the requisite corruption of the voter roll thanks to transitory registrations, and almost certainly engages in industrial scale ballot harvesting in and around the campus, which is illegal in the state.  Here are the margins for Democrats since 2008: 12,214; 9,817, 12,573; 15,155.

That last large margin came despite a gain of 7,428 net new votes for Trump, which nearly equaled George W. Bush’s record Republican gain achieved in 2004.  Assuming Trump gains enough new votes and leans into the GOP registration advantage, with the cheat in play, I struggle to see the margin decreasing to less than the 9,817 margin in 2012, which would mark a substantial improvement.  Scratch another 5,000 from the deficit, meaning we need to shift 67,370 votes in Bernalillo County.

Bernalillo: More than one-third of New Mexico’s vote, and once a reliably Republican urban center.  In 2020, thanks to the horrific election administration present under a Democrat trifecta, Bernalillo produced the second largest Democrat presidential margin in its history (24.4%).  Margins since 2004, when Bush had 47.29% of the vote:

2004: 10,798

2008: 61,035

2012: 44,331

2016: 48,719

2020: 77,622

The single largest shift in margin in one cycle is the jump from Kerry +4.3% to Obama +21.4%, and it moved 50,237 ballots in margin, which would still put us short of the goal by 17,133 ballots if Trump did it to the Democrats in reverse.  Giving Trump a tilt win in Sandoval County, which hasn’t gone red in 2004, stabilizing him in Santa Fe, which is not a bet I would advise you to take, and knocking off 5,000 margin in Dona Ana, leaves us in a familiar position.

Trump is going to need to replicate George W. Bush’s performance in 2004, and my target is 48% of the vote, anticipating 330,000 ballots counted in Bernalillo County.

Trump with 48% of 330,000 ballots equals 158,400 ballots; Biden at 50% of 330,000 ballots (with 2% third-party) equals 165,000 ballots, a gap of 6,600 between the two candidates, enough to give Trump a margin of less than 4,000 votes statewide if (and that’s a big if) all other projections aren’t manipulated by Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver’s entrenched system of election controls, or by ridiculous laws like the ones telling you there is no transparency for elections on reservations, where my precinct mapping shows you ballot stuffing is definitely occuring.

Here is what a winning Trump map of New Mexico would look like, as described above:

How Trump Can Win

·      Advance margins in 29 counties outside of the Big 3 and Sandoval County, preferably beyond the numbers I’ve presented in this report that eat up 21,350 of the 2020 margin.

·      Hold ground in Santa Fe County and erode margins in Dona Ana County pursuant to GOP party registration gains and advancement with Hispanic voters.  This will require patrolling of suspected ballot harvesting hotspots, which is illegal in the state.

·      Win Sandoval County.

·      Get at least 48% of the vote in Bernalillo County, which accounts for more than 1/3 of the vote in the state.  George W. Bush approached that share in 2004, but won the state because he nearly tied Dona Ana County.

For now, I am leaving New Mexico in the lean Biden category, likely within 5 points and in line with the average of the two most recent two-man race polls I’ve posted in this article. New Mexico is fool’s gold, and a textbook case of using dominant urban centers and poverty-stricken rural areas to create a soft Democrat stronghold with a low, but consistent margin of victory. I suspect Trump would have a slight advantage in New Mexico if these cheats were cleaned out.

For all 2024 analysis, link To Captain K’s 2024 Electoral College Situation Room.