Jon Barela, left, and Martin Heinrich
If you had asked me over the weekend where the 1st Congressional District race stood, I would have told you Democratic incumbent Martin Heinrich was probably leading Republican challenger Jon Barela by about 10 points.
So I was as shocked as anyone when KOB-TV released its new SurveyUSA poll Monday evening that shows Barela leading by six points.
The poll has Barela leading 51 percent to 45 percent. It was conducted Thursday-Sunday, surveyed 559 likely voters and has a margin of error of 4.2 percentage points. Barela led among all age groups and among men, Anglos and independents.
I searched late Monday afternoon and into the evening for someone who expected this result. I didn’t find anyone – Republican, Democrat or otherwise. In fact, Heinrich’s staff was quick to give New Mexico Politics with Joe Monahan a polling memo from a survey it conducted two weeks ago that had Heinrich ahead by 12 points.
That survey, conducted July 8-13 by the Democratic firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, polled 505 likely general election voters and had a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
So, what to make of the SurveyUSA poll? Everyone is guessing right now. The poll is an anomaly that doesn’t match with any other thus far. In May, Heinrich released a poll showing him ahead 17 points. And in February, a poll from a Democratic firm showed Heinrich ahead nine points.
However, that doesn’t mean the new poll shouldn’t be taken seriously. As far as automated polls go, SurveyUSA’s are among the best. And the company has done a lot of polling in New Mexico.
Lots of questions
But Barela hasn’t been on TV. We’re in July, when there’s as much of a lull in the race as there will be before Election Day. What would have shifted the race so dramatically between Heinrich’s newest poll and the SurveyUSA poll?
The answer is that nothing probably shifted the race that dramatically. The more likely explanation comes in considering the margins of error in both surveys. Say at the time of Heinrich’s most recent poll he was really up nine points, which is plausible. And at the time of the SurveyUSA poll Barela was really ahead two points – which I’m also not buying, but there’s less of a swing between the two polls when you push things to the edge of the margin of error.
Both polls could also be a little off, especially in a place like Albuquerque. It was a city that was dramatically affected by the Barack Obama wave in 2008 – and that wave helped Heinrich win his first congressional race by 12 points.
There were tens of thousands of new registered voters in 2008. Will they vote this year? Should they be counted in the polls? Are people identifying themselves as likely voters when they’re really not?
What should be clear is this: The 1st Congressional District race is now officially a very hot contest – one more for Democrats to pour their all into when they’re already having trouble in the gubernatorial and 2nd Congressional District races. Because Barela hasn’t yet done TV, this poll isn’t about him. I would guess his name ID is only around 25 percent in the district. Barela’s lead in the survey is due to anti-incumbent sentiment. It’s anti-Heinrich, or at least anti-Washington.
A strong anti-incumbent mood in Albuquerque
And the anti-incumbent mood in Albuquerque is apparently huge this year. That has implications for more than the CD1 race. It’s bad for Democrats Diane Denish and Gary King in the gubernatorial and attorney general races. It may be bad up and down the ballot for Democrats.
It’s difficult to say. Hopefully we’ll see another CD1 poll soon to give us more data to analyze.
In the meantime, I’m going to guess that the anti-incumbent wave is strong in Albuquerque because the Obama wave was so strong there – a sort of equal-and-opposite-reaction kind of thing. And, whereas I would have guessed this weekend that Heinrich was ahead by about 10 points, I’m now going to speculate that he’s up 3-5 points – probably closer to five.
Considering that Barela has yet to air TV ads, that’s huge. It means Barela has a realistic shot of winning this race, if he can raise enough money. The new poll will help him raise cash. But the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which will air ads for Heinrich (or against Barela), has more than twice as much money on hand as the National Republican Congressional Committee, which will come to Barela’s aid.
One more thought: In the context of this CD1 poll, I’d love to see a new poll of the 2nd District race between Democratic incumbent Harry Teague and Republican challenger Steve Pearce. This weekend, I would have told you my guess was that Pearce was ahead 3-5 points. Maybe his lead is actually greater.