Wednesday, February 24, 2010

PPP Poll Says Denish Leading Governor's Race

Lt. Gov. Diane Denish is leading Republican rivals in the governor's race, accoeriding to the just-released poll by Public Policy Polling.



Where New Mexico departs from its regional counterparts is that it still looks favored to vote Democratic in its most significant statewide race this year. Lieutenant Governor Diane Denish leads her top Republican opponent, Pete Domenici Jr., by a 45-40 margin and has leads of 14-18 points over the rest of the GOP field.

Denish is by far the best known of the candidates running, with 41% of voters in the state holding a positive opinion of her to just 34% who see her negatively. Domenici is the only one of the Republicans who more than half of the state has an opinion about, although it's possible people could just be conflating him with his father. Only 29-37% of the electorate has an opinion about any of the other GOP contenders.

This is the same poll that shows Gov. Bill Richardson's numbers way way down.

Says PPP president Dean Debnam, "“Given Obama and Richardson’s low levels of popularity (in N.M.) Diane Denish is doing pretty well. But a contest with
Domenici certainly looks like it could be competitive.”

The poll is based on surveys of 990 New Mexico voters from February 18th to 20th. The survey’s margin of error is 3.1 percent.

PPP is a Democrat polling firm.

The full poll is below:

PPP_NM POLL