October 6, 2020

Biden leads Trump by 14 points in NM

Photos via Gage Skidmore. (Flickr/Flickr)

Joe Biden leads Donald Trump by 14 points in a poll conducted by Public Policy Polling for NM Political Report.

The poll found that 53 percent of New Mexico voters said they will vote for Biden, a Democrat, while 39 percent say they will vote for Trump, a Republican. Another two percent said they would vote for Libertarian Party candidate Jo Jorgensen. Two percent said they would vote for someone else and 4 percent were not sure.

This is similar to a poll commissioned by NM Political Report following the June primaries, though that poll did not include Jorgensen as a named option.

Both major party candidates received the support of most of the voters from their own parties. The poll found that 86 percent of Democrats said they would vote for Biden to just 8 percent who said they would vote for Trump. And 84 percent of Republicans said they would vote for Trump, while 10 percent said they would vote for Biden. Biden leads among independents by a 43 percent to 35 percent margin.

Biden also has a significant lead among Hispanic or Latino voters, leading 67 percent to 26 percent. New Mexico has the highest percentage of Hispanic or Latino voters of any state in the country. Trump, meanwhile, leads among white voters, 53 percent to 41 percent. Biden leads among Native American voters 66 percent to 18 percent, while other ethnicities back Biden 54 percent to 16 percent for Trump—just two points ahead of Jorgensen, though the sample is a low number.

Of those polled, 47 percent said they voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, while 37 percent said Donald Trump, 9 percent said Gary Johnson and 7 percent said they voted for someone else or did not vote.

An Albuquerque Journal poll conducted in late August and early September found Biden ahead by 15 points.

NM Political Report will release results from the the U.S. Senate race on Wednesday and overall approval ratings and COVID-19 approval ratings on Thursday.

The poll was conducted on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, the day after the contentious debate between the two candidates last week, which included frequent interruptions by the president and could result in changes to the structure of the next two scheduled debates. The poll was concluded before Trump announced that he tested positive for COVID-19.

The poll surveyed 886 New Mexico voters was condcuted through automated calls to landlines and text messages to cell-phone only voters and has a margin of error of +/- 3.3 percent. The margin of error on subsamples is larger.

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