PPP Shows Martinez, Udall Leading, King Leading Dem Gov Primary

Public Policy Polling, the North Carolina-based Democrat-affiliated polling company, shows Gov. Susana Martinez and U.S. Sen. Tom Udall handily leading in their respective races for re-election.

This is the first national poll I've seen this year for New Mexico races, and first one I've seen so far not commissioned by a campaign. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Lawrence Rael released one yesterday.

PPP shows Republican Martinez beating Democrat Gary King 47-42 percent, a five percentage point margin. She leads all the other Democratic candidates by double digits.

Democrat Udall, seeking his second 6-year term leads both Republican candidates Allen Weh and David Clement by 20 points or better.

Both Martinez and Udall have approval ratings of more than 50 percent.

In the Democratic primary, King -- who came in last place at the state Democrats' pre-primary convention this month -- is ahead of the pack in the PPP poll.

In this poll, King has the support of 34 percent, Howie Morales is a distant second with 15 percent; Linda Lopez has 13 percent; Lawrence Rael has seven percent and Alan Webber has five percent.

The pollster warns however that the race is far from over. 27 percent of those surveyed are undecided. "But it's a pretty substantial early advantage [for King]," the PPP blog says.

In match-ups with Martinez, Rael is behind by 11 percentage points; both Morales and Lopez are behind by 14 points and Weber by 16 points.

In the general election questions, PPP interviewed 674 registered voters (as opposed to "likely" voters). For the primary race, the poll is based on interviews of 327. The pollsters say the margin of error is 3.8 percent for the overall survey. It doesn't show a number for the Democratic primary poll.

As it normally does, the state Republican Party denounced the poll as "skewed" with "cooked numbers" even though it shows Martinez handily defeating all the Dem challengers. The GOP said the same thing about PPP's polls in the U.S. Senate race in 2012, though the firm was well within the margin of error in its numbers for Sen. Martin Heinrich and Republican candidate Heather Wilson.

The full poll is HERE.

UPDATE: 3:05 pm PPP Director Tom Jensen tells me that the margin of error for the Democratic primary is 5.4 percent.