Two More Bad Polls for Wilson and Romney in NM

Last Friday the Heather Wilson and Martin Heinrich camps released conflicting internal polls. Heinrich's showed him with an eight percentage point lead over Wilson. But Wilson's showed her only one percentage point behind Heinrich -- which represented a dramatic shift and backed up Wilson's contention that she was on the comeback trail.

There have been exceptions, but I generally ignore internal polls. I figured these two cancelled each other out and that the truth was somewhere in between.

But yesterday, (when I was off work), two independent polls came out, and if you can believe them them, Wilson's internal poll was way off and even Heinrich's poll underestimated his lead.

The Rasmussen Report -- which tends to lean Republican -- showed Heinrich 13 percentage points ahead, 52 percent to 39 percent. It was an automated poll on Sept. 27 of 500 likely voters with a 4.5 percent margin of error.

As her campaign has done with other polling companies, Wilson questioned the methodology of the Rasmussen poll. Rob Nikolewski has those comments HERE.

Later in the day, another poll from the We Ask America firm showed Heinrich head by about 11 percentage points. The Democrat was supported by just over 52 percent and Wilson with just under 41 percent. The company did automated interviews with 1,258 likely voters between Sept. 25 and 27. Their margin of error is 2.5 percent.

Both polling firms also asked about the presidential race. Both showed President Obama with a double digit lead over Republican Mitt Romney in the race for New Mexico's five electoral votes.

Rasmussen showed President Obama with 51 percent and Romney with 40 percent of the vote here. "Some Other Candidate" pulled six percent.

We Ask America had Obama at just under 51 percent and Romney at 40.6 percent. Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson was right under four percent of the vote.

With numbers like these, I suspect New Mexico won't be seeing many more national polling companies working this state for the rest of the year.