A poll conducted for the Michelle Lujan Grisham campaign shows she has a massive lead over the other three candidates in the Democratic primary for governor.
The internally-funded poll shows that the congresswoman from Albuquerque has the support of 72 percent of Democratic primary voters. All other candidates are far behind, with former media executive Jeff Apodaca at 13 percent, state Senator Joe Cervantes at 6 percent and alcohol tax advocate Peter DeBendittis at 2 percent.
The campaign released the poll just days ahead of the Democratic pre-primary convention, where delegates from around the state will vote on who ends up on the ballot. Candidates who receive the support of 20 percent of those at the pre-primary convention will automatically make the ballot, while those who fail to do so will need to collect additional signatures to make the primary ballot.
It appears as though Lujan Grisham’s advantage comes from being more well-recognized than her opponents while also having high favorable ratings among registered Democrats in the state. The poll found 93 percent of Democratic primary voters were able to identify Lujan Grisham, and she had a 70-14 favorable-unfavorable rating among those same voters.
Just 59 percent of primary voters were able to identify Jeff Apodaca and 40 percent State Senator Joseph Cervantes. The polling memo did not say how many voters were able to identify DeBendittis.
A poll conducted in October by the same pollster, but not for the Lujan Grisham campaign, showed similar results.
There is only one Republican candidate for governor, U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce.
Internal polls are only released when they show good news for the candidate releasing them, so interpreting results require putting that into context.
Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research conducted the poll of 400 Democratic primary voters between February 14 and 19. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 4.9 percentage points.
