A majority of respondents said they would support increasing taxes tobacco and alcohol taxes and taxes on out-of-state corporations.

The teacher's poll polling report.

The poll of 400 registered voters shows that 81 percent think the stage budget should be balanced “without cutting public school funding.”

The question asked was, “The state of New Mexico has a budget deficit of around $650 million for the current fiscal year. Do you feel that public school funding should be cut to help balance the budget or do you feel that hte state budget should be balanced without cutting public school funding?”

Of that, 13 percent said that public school funding should be cut while 3 percent said it “depends” while 3 percent did not or would not say.

Even more respondents, 88 percent, opposed cutting “teacher and other school employees’ salaries” as part of a budget balancing plan. Just 6 percent said salary cuts should be included, while 3 percent said it “depends” and 3 percent did not know or would not say.

Of the five proposals for ways to increase funding for public schools, three had a majority of support. Seventy percent supported an increase on tobacco and alcohol taxes, 61 percent supported increasing taxes on out-of-state corporations and 55 percent supporting taking money out of the state’s permanent funds.

Rep. Brian Egolf told NMI on Saturday that he would introduce bills on Sunday raising taxes on tobacco and alcohol.

A plurality of respondents, 49 percent, said they would “support or oppose rolling back the [2003] tax cuts for higher income New Mexicans.”

A minority, 44 percent, supported an increase in the sales tax by three quarters of a percent.

New Mexico Education Partners is a coalition of organizations, including AFT New Mexico, the National Education Association-New Mexico, the New Mexico Coalition of School Administrators, the New Mexico PTA and the New Mexico School Boards Association.

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“It’ll be ancient history on election day,” he said. “I’d rather have done it one week out from the election.”

Sanderoff’s team conducted the Albuquerque Journal poll almost two weeks prior to this Tuesday’s vote. Conducted Sept. 22-24, and presented to the public in the Journal on Sept. 27, it showed 31 percent going for State Rep. Richard Berry, 26 percent for incumbent mayor Martin Chavez, and 24 percent for former State Senate President Pro Tem Richard Romero.

Since then, the candidates have been in a mad dash for the 19 percent who were still undecided.

With these numbers, the big question is whether one of the candidates can get to 40 percent and avoid a run-off. The margin of error in Sanderoff’s poll is 5 points in either direction, which means Tuesday’s results could break in any direction. There hasn’t been another public poll to give us an idea of how the electorate has shifted.

Sanderoff said that fewer polls are being conducted in this race, partially because under public financing, candidates have less money to pay for polls. In previous elections, candidates have paid for their own polls and leaked the results to the press. But that hasn’t happened so far this year.

That’s why the Albuquerque Journal poll continues to “make waves” to a degree he hasn’t seen in a long while. He’s gotten a lot more response than usual, he said, with a marked increase in calls, emails, people he doesn’t know stopping him on the street, not to mention the interest shown in Santa Fe on a recent visit he made to the City Different.

“Legislators all over the state are talking about the poll and following the mayor’s race,” he said, “which is not normal.”

The poll may have surprised the political class because it didn’t confirm the suspicion that some have had since Albuquerque voters gave themselves a public financing system back in 2005.

Many thought the mayor’s race in 2009 would show that when the playing field is leveled in terms of money, the incumbent’s name recognition and ability to tap City Hall resources would give him a big leg up in the race.

University of New Mexico political science professor Timothy Krebs, who studies urban politics, said in an interview that the poll challenged his assumptions that public financing would protect the incumbent.

“My assumption is that these systems protect the incumbent if the amount of funds is set too low, and I thought that might be the case here,”he said, “but it doesn’t appear to have hurt the challengers. The targeting of voters is so much more sophisticated now, candidates can get their messages out to really specific groups, making spending much more efficient.”

Chavez’s two competitors began hammering away at him as soon as they qualified for public financing back in April. They did it sometimes in tandem, at other times trading off, and have basically ignored one another.

But Chavez didn’t begin officially campaigning until mid-July, perhaps because he had only a fraction of the amount of funds he had back in 2005, when he used $1.2 million to blanket the city in political ads.

“He was sort of coy early on,” Krebs said. “It could be that Chavez made a strategic error in not responding to the attacks of his two opponents, sooner.”

Chavez instead began rolling out a campaign in July focused on his administrations accomplishments while playing defense against the other two. He began going after his opponents records in about mid-September.

How it will play out on Tuesday is anyone’s guess. If there’s a run-off, it’ll happen on Nov. 24.

Albuquerque City Clerk Randy Autio told NMI last week that a run-off would be an entirely new election. Each candidate would receive a third of the public funds they received for the general election — which will be roughly $109, 000 — and the same rules will apply all over again.

For more information about the election, see the League of Women Voters’ Election Guide.

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