I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Democrats in battleground districts, including New Mexico Reps. Martin Heinrich and Harry Teague, will face a tough election according to a new NPR poll showing that likely voters in swing districts are more happy with Republicans than Democrats.
According to the poll, only 34 percent of voters would re-elect their member of Congress while 46 percent would vote for somebody else—including 29 percent who said they would “definitely” vote for someone else in November.
The results aren’t surprising, considering nearly half of the respondents in the battleground districts consider themselves “conservative,” even more than the 40 percent of self-described conservatives in the Republican districts polled.
There is a potential wedge issue as financial reform is supported by a plurality in Democratic-held districts and a majority in Republican-held districts.
One reason the Republican-held districts seem less amenable to Republicans is that some are heavily-Democratic districts that elected Republicans in not-normal circumstances. For example, Hawaii’s 1st Congressional District elected Republican Charles Djou with under 40 percent of the vote because of two Democrats splitting the rest of the electorate.
Statistician and political polling expert Nate Silver wrote that this is bad news for incumbent Democrats — though bad news that has been shown by other previous polls.
“Broadly speaking, this poll is consistent with the impression I have had of the House picture for almost a year now, which is that the over/under on the number of net Democratic losses is about 40 seats (i.e. they have about even odds of losing the House), with a 90 percent confidence interval of about +/- 20 seats,” Silver wrote.
The poll was conducted by Democratic polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and Republican polling firm Public Opinion Strategies.
For incumbents in Democratic-districts, 40 percent approved of the job their member of Congress was doing versus 38 percent who disapproved. In Republican districts, 54 percent approved of the job their member of Congress was doing versus 32 percent who disapproved.
Of those polled, 53 percent disapprove of the job that President Barack Obama is doing as president, while 43 percent approve.
The full results are available here (pdf). The poll of 1,200 as a whole, including those in both Democratic and Republican districts, has a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points. Subcategories have a higher margin of error.
