A poll just days ahead of Albuquerque’s mayoral runoff election shows Tim Keller has a sizeable lead—and is above the 50 percent mark.
The poll, conducted by Research and Polling, Inc. for the Albuquerque Journal, shows Keller, the current State Auditor, leads City Councilor Dan Lewis 53 percent to 34 percent among likely voters. The run-off election will take place Tuesday after no candidate received 50 percent of the vote in the first round of voting in October. In that eight-way race, Keller received just under 40 percent of the vote, and Lewis, just under 23 percent.
The poll shows that 13 percent of likely voters are still undecided.
While the race is nonpartisan, Keller is a Democrat and Lewis is a Republican. The poll found that Keller received the support of 81 percent of Democrats to Lewis’ 10 percent, while Lewis received the support of just 68 percent of Republicans to Keller’s 18 percent. Keller also leads among independent voters, 45 percent to 31 percent.
There is also a city council runoff election in District 5. That is the district currently represented by Lewis.
The winner on Tuesday will take over for Mayor Richard Berry on Dec. 1. Berry, a former Republican state representative, won two terms and opted to not run for a third term this year.
The poll of 618 likely voters took place between Nov. 7 and 9, and has a margin of error of +/- 3.9 percentage points. The poll was conducted by telephone and polled an equal number of cellphones and landlines.
