New Mexico’s blistering voter turnout pace continued over the weekend, and the Secretary of State’s office reported 562,909 votes have already cast ballots in this year’s general election, with over a week to go until Election Day.
The turnout represents 70 percent of the total turnout in New Mexico in 2016 (which included final absentee, early in-person and Election Day voting).
New Mexico already shattered its previous record for returned absentee ballots last week, and as of Monday morning, 252,905 voters have returned absentee ballots. The Secretary of State’s office was not able to provide data on how many total absentee ballot requests were received by county clerks. It’s likely that the over 250,000 returned ballots represent about two-thirds of the total requests.
Early in-person voting also continued to exceed that of 2016. The report from eight days before Election Day in 2016 said 278,875 voters had cast ballots in person that year already; as of Monday morning, 310,004 voters had already cast in-person ballots.
A winter storm hitting much of the state in the first half of this week will likely impact vote totals in many areas.
Democrats had cast just over half of all ballots as of Monday morning.
| Party | Early In-Person | Absentee | Total | Percent of Total |
| Democratic | 125,223 | 159,668 | 284,891 | 50.61% |
| Republican | 141,307 | 53,516 | 194,823 | 34.61% |
| Decline to State | 39,654 | 36,748 | 76,402 | 13.57% |
| Libertarian | 2,052 | 1,532 | 3,584 | 0.64% |
| Other | 1,768 | 1,441 | 3,209 | 0.57% |
| Total | 310,004 | 252,905 | 562,909 | n/a |
Republicans continued to outpace Democrats among those who voted early in-person. Republicans had cast 45.58 percent of all early in-person ballots, while Democrats had cast 40.39 percent.
But Democrats maintained their massive advantage with absentee ballots. As of Monday morning, Democrats had returned 63.13 percent of all absentee ballots.
Democrats still have tens of thousands more unreturned absentee ballots than Republicans.
The Secretary of State’s office said that any New Mexico voters who wish to return absentee ballots by mail should do so by Tuesday to ensure they arrive by Election Day. Only absentee ballots that arrive by 7 p.m. on Election Day will be eligible to be counted. Voters can also drop off absentee ballots at in-person voting locations, including early in-person voting locations.
In 2016, over 97 percent of all voters who requested absentee ballots returned them by the close of polls on Election Day.
In Bernalillo County, over 110,000 voters had returned absentee ballots and over 90,000 voters cast their ballots in-person through early voting by Monday morning, both by far the most in the state.
Sandoval County had the next-most early in-person votes, with 26,828, followed by 25,834 in Doña Ana County, 24,127 in Santa Fe County and 21,867 in San Juan County.
Among those who returned requested absentee ballots, 29,369 did so in Santa Fe County, 23,739 in Sandoval County and 21,416 in Doña Ana County.
Correction (10/27): This post originally had the wrong total number of votes for for Democrats. This has been corrected.
