John Jefferson
It’s difficult to believe the former President Donald Trump can win New Mexico, but a newly released poll by KA Consulting claims the Republican ticket is only down three percentage points against Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
KA Consulting’s metrics claim a much closer race than the symphony of major pollsters, all of whom have Harris comfortably carrying the Southwestern state. KA Consulting polled 612 likely voters between October 16 and 18 and cited a recent NBC poll that found Trump’s position strengthening among Hispanics as evidence that Trump can pull off a shocking upset in the Sun Belt. Nearly half of the state’s population identifies as Hispanic, and the politics of a border state cannot be discounted during an election cycle where illegal immigration has dominated policy discussions.
The consulting firm also cites former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s strong polling numbers in the state before he dropped out of the race to support Trump as evidence that Trump could improve on his poor showings in 2016 and 2020. The former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, running as the Libertarian presidential candidate, won nine percent of the vote in New Mexico in 2016, which suggests there could be tens of thousands of voters who could make the state a competitive race, however unlikely.
KA is an outlier, for sure. New Mexico hasn’t cast its electoral votes for a Republican for president since 2004 when George W. Bush won by 6,000 votes. A just-released poll conducted for the Albuquerque Journal found Harris ahead by nine points, which tracks closely to how the state voted for President Joe Biden in the 2020 election when Democrat won it by double digits. Another local poll funded by KOB television out of Albuquerque found Harris decisively ahead by eight points. And Polymarket, the most Pro-Trump oddsmaker across the internet, gives Harris a 90 percent chance to win New Mexico.
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