Lt. Gov. Diane Denish (Photo by Heath Haussamen)

Lt. Gov. Diane Denish (Photo by Heath Haussamen)

Lt. Gov. Diane Denish, a Democrat, is ahead of five potential Republican challengers, according to the first public polling of the New Mexico gubernatorial race. Pete Domenici Jr. is Denish’s closest competitor; she has 45 percent support to his 40 percent. Denish is also best known of all the candidates, with 75 percent name recognition.

Democratic polling firm Public Policy Polling (PPP) polled 990 registered voters from New Mexico between February 18 and February 20. The survey has a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent.

The state Republican Party responded by releasing month-old internal poll showing a generic Republican would beat a generic Democrat 44 percent to 40 percent in a gubernatorial election. That poll was conducted January 25-27th with 500 likely voters and has a 4.38 percent margin of error.

But according to the PPP poll, Denish holds larger leads against the other Republicans in the field, with poll respondents saying they prefer her by 48 percent to 30 percent over Allen Weh, 47 percent to 33 percent over Janice Arnold-Jones and 46 percent to 32 percent over both Susana Martinez and Doug Turner.

Denish is viewed favorably even as other prominent Democrats are not. Governor Bill Richardson has a very low approval rating, among the lowest in the country for governors. PPP found that 48 percent of New Mexicans disapprove of the job that Barack Obama is doing, while only 45 percent approve.

Denish has a 41 percent approval rate with 34 percent disapproval.

Of the Republican candidates, only Domenici is known at all among more than half of the state “although it’s possible people could just be conflating him with his father,” PPP wrote in its official blog.

“Domenici is viewed favorably by 27 percent, followed by 17 percent for Martinez, 12 percent for Weh and Turner, and 8 percent for Arnold-Jones,” according to the polling memo. All of them have net-negative approval ratings, though with such high amounts of people who do not know (ranging from 38 percent for Domenici to 71 percent for Arnold-Jones), it is difficult to get an accurate grasp on how popular or unpopular any of the Republicans truly are.

“Given Obama and Richardson’s low levels of popularity, Diane Denish is doing pretty well,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “But a contest with Domenici certainly looks like it could be competitive.”

Domenici is a political newcomer who shares a name with his father,  former long-time New Mexico Republican Senator Pete Domenici.

“Even in this hostile political climate, Diane Denish holds a lead against all of her potential opponents,” Denish deputy campaign manager Chris Cervini said in a statement. “That’s because New Mexicans view her as an independent voice and a champion for middle-class families and their jobs.”

A press release from the Martinez “Strategy Team” disputes the poll’s findings, saying the “liberal Democratic polling firm based in North Carolina” uses “questionable methodology by employing auto-dialers rather than live interviewers.”

The Martinez Strategy Team also noted that Denish was below the 50 percent mark.

“Internal polling data seriously challenges the findings released today,” stated Ryan Cangiolosi, executive director of the Republican Party of New Mexico. “And we remain confident that the Republican message of stamping out corruption and restoring fiscal responsibility will resonate with voters on election day.”

The debate over the reliability of automated pollsters has raged since automated pollsters, such as SurveyUSA and Rasmussen Reports, began to gain prominence.

Mark Blumenthal of Pollster.com took on the issue of automated pollsters, or “interactive voice response” (IVR) pollsters, in 2006, saying:

Skepticism about IVR polling based on theoretical concerns is certainly widespread in the survey research establishment, but one can look long and hard for hard evidence of the lack of reliability of IVR, or even Internet polling, without success. Precious little exists, and the few reviews available (such as the work of my friend, Prof. Joel Bloom, or the 2004 Slate review by David Kenner and William Saletan) indicate that the numbers produced by the IVR pollsters comport as well or better than with actual election results than those from their traditional competitors.

This year, Blumenthal again revisited the debate and noted a report that showed use of ‘interactive voice response (IVR) techniques made no difference to the accuracy of estimates’ in primary polls.”

The differences between the PPP poll and the Republican poll are many. PPP polled registered voters, while the internal Republican poll was of likely voters. Most significantly, the Republican numbers were from a generic ballot — that is, no names were used. An internal poll by Republican Steve Pearce in the 2nd Congressional District race showed Pearce up 4 percent, though the generic ballot showed a Republican leading a Democrat by ten percent.

When asked if the Republican poll used names along with the generic ballot, Republican Party of New Mexico spokesperson Janel Causey told The Independent in an e-mail, “At this point, the only data we are releasing is what we have shared today.”

The PPP poll also found that U.S. Sens. Tom Udall and Jeff Bingaman, both Democrats, are in positive territory in approval ratings; 48 percent of those polled approve of the job they are doing while 36 percent disapprove.

Tomorrow, PPP will be releasing polls on Congressional races in New Mexico.

PPP is one of the few pollsters that provides a full polling memo, a valuable resource. The memo is embedded below.

PPP NM-Gov Poll Feb 24