By Marjorie Childress, New Mexico In Depth | August 27, 2026
Political polls can tell us a lot about an election, but history offers plenty of reasons for caution. Just this month, in the lead-up to Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, polls showed progressive Francesca Hong well ahead of eventual winner David Crowley. It brought to mind 2016, when major election forecasts heavily favored Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump.
The 2016 election lingers in the back of my mind just about every time I look at national analysis of New Mexico statewide races, like the Cook Political Report’s rating of New Mexico as a solid win for Deb Haaland in 2026. The Cook Political Report is known for highly respected, nonpartisan political analysis. But in 2016, even its analysis of polls tripped up its projections for the presidential race. Here’s what Cook wrote a little more than three weeks before the 2016 election: “Polling since the first debate has shown an unmistakable pattern — Clinton has been climbing and Trump has been falling — even in states once considered safely red.”
And just after the election, Pew Research wrote: “Relying largely on opinion polls, election forecasters put Clinton’s chance of winning at anywhere from 70% to as high as 99%…How could the polls have been so wrong about the state of the election?”
I’m not saying polls aren’t valuable. I’m looking forward to the first poll of the New Mexico governor’s race by Research & Polling Inc.’s Brian Sanderoff. He has a remarkably good track record.
But there’s another tool for thinking about what might happen: how New Mexicans have actually voted in past elections. I looked at results for statewide offices going back to 1990.
Before lobbing a bunch of numbers at you, let’s acknowledge that data isn’t everything.
Scandals matter. Third-party candidates can matter. And incumbency can never be discounted.
Let’s take scandals first, and this comes from historical memory more than data.
Republicans’ two Secretary of State victories in this period both belong to Dianna Duran, who first won in 2010 when Democratic incumbent Mary Herrera was beset by allegations of misconduct and mismanagement. Former employees accused Herrera of improperly involving state workers in her reelection campaign and soliciting support from contractors doing business with her office. Herrera was never charged. Duran beat her by nearly 15 points.
That same year, Republican Susana Martinez won the governor’s race as Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson ended his eight-year run in the office under a cloud of pay-to-play allegations. Richardson was never charged. But Martinez relentlessly tied Democratic nominee Diane Denish, Richardson’s lieutenant governor, to his administration — so much so that Denish ran an ad reminding voters Richardson wasn’t on the ballot.
Six years later, scandal worked against the GOP. Democrat Maggie Toulouse Oliver won a special election for secretary of state after Duran resigned after being charged with embezzlement, fraud and campaign-finance violations.
None of this proves scandal determined those elections. But it’s a warning against treating every result as evidence of an underlying partisan trend.
Third-party candidates can complicate things, too. The Green Party may have played a role in Republican Gary Johnson’s first victory for governor in 1994. Johnson received 49.8% to Democratic incumbent Bruce King’s 39.9%, while Green Party candidate Roberto Mondragón took 10.3% — with more votes than Johnson’s margin of victory over King. We can’t know what those voters would have done in a two-way race, but Mondragón ran to King’s left and drew support from Democratic-leaning voters.
We’re not really speculating when we say incumbency helps a candidate win. We know it’s generally an advantage. Voters tend to want to give elected officials another term. Johnson comfortably won reelection four years after winning in 1994 when fewer than half of New Mexican voters supported him. Susana Martinez won a second term comfortably in 2014. The elections of these two Republicans account for the four Republican gubernatorial victories since 1990.
Ticket Splitting
New Mexico voters have a history of ticket-splitting: voting for one party’s candidate for governor and a different party’s candidate for, say, treasurer, all on the same ballot. Democrats have remained dominant, but Republicans have won consequential statewide races since 1990.
One way to look at how much ticket-splitting occurred in an election is to look at the “spread.” That’s the range between outcomes across statewide races in the same election. In years when the results were mixed between the two parties, that range crossed from an actual Republican win to an actual Democratic win.
In 2006, Bill Richardson won the governorship by 37.6 points — while the land commissioner, on the very same ballot, went Republican by 3.5 points. That’s a 41-point spread between two races decided by the same voters.
A wide spread means voters treated the races that year as separate decisions. A narrow spread means something closer to one decision across the races.
In 1994, voters elected a Republican governor — and then gave Democrats every other statewide office, including a 21.8-point win for Attorney General Tom Udall.
In 2010, the year remembered as Susana Martinez’s Republican wave, Republicans took just two offices — governor and secretary of state, which Duran won by 14.9 points over Herrera, making her the first Republican to win the office in more than 80 years. Democrats still won state treasurer by 10.7 points.
The spread in 2014 was 30.9 points — between the best Democratic race (attorney general) and the best Republican race (governor). That reflects ticket-splitting: how differently the statewide electorate voted across those two races on the same ballot.
In 2018, every contested office went Democratic. Donald Trump was president that year, and a Democratic sweep in a midterm against an unpopular Republican president isn’t surprising on its own terms.
Democrats had another sweep in 2022. The year stands out for another reason, though. In every one of the previous eight elections, from 1990 to 2018, New Mexico elected a governor from the opposite party of whoever held the White House. In 2022, with a Democrat in the White House, New Mexico went with the Democratic incumbent, breaking that streak. These results suggest Democrats consolidated that year; they became less prone to ticket splitting.
Put all of this together, what’s the answer to the question this piece opened with — can a Republican win a statewide seat this year?
Here’s my take, and I’d like to hear yours.
New Mexico voters have shown they’re willing to elect Republican governors and secretaries of state, but those wins have coincided with scandal and controversy in the Democratic bench, or a strong third party candidate. On the other hand, the land commissioner race has gone Republican in years that Democrats were winning everything else by historic margins. Given the unpopularity of Trump, the sitting Republican president, I’d lay odds on Democrats sweeping the statewide races this year. Still, I always have these historical Republican wins in the back of my mind when considering whether Democrats have statewide elections wrapped up.
Six Statewide Races
Governor. Since 1990, Republicans have won this race four times and Democrats five. Susana Martinez won comfortably in 2014; Bill Richardson won by a landslide in 2006. Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham comfortably won in the two most recent cycles. This year it’s an open seat between former Democratic U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Gregg Hull, former Republican mayor of Rio Rancho.
Secretary of State. Democrats have won this office seven of nine times since 1990. This year, with Maggie Toulouse Oliver term-limited, it’s an open race between Amanda López Askin (D) and Ramona Goolsby (R).
Attorney General. Democrats have won every Attorney General race since at least 1990 — nine for nine. This year, incumbent Raúl Torrez (D) is running for re-election against Samuel Kane (R).
State Auditor. Also undefeated for Democrats since 1990. Incumbent Democrat Joseph Maestas is running again this year against Republican Joshua Lawrence.
State Treasurer. Same story, held by Democrats since 1990. This year, incumbent Laura Montoya (D) is running against James Ellison (R).
Commissioner of Public Lands. The one office that Republicans have won more than any statewide office besides governor, including in 2002 and 2006 — the same years Richardson was winning the governorship by historic margins. The two most recent cycles, 2018 and 2022, were both comfortably Democratic. It’s an open seat this year: Juan de Jesus Sanchez (D) against Michael Perry (R).
