Diane Denish (Photo by Heath Haussamen)
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Diane Denish is pushing back against Republican Susana Martinez’s internal poll showing the GOP candidate ahead 10 points by releasing her own poll that shows Martinez leading by 5 points.
Martinez is leading 49 percent to 44 percent in the internal poll the Denish campaign released today. The poll, conducted Sept. 12-14 by the Democratic firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, surveyed 850 likely general election voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.
You can read the polling memo here.
As I reported earlier today, Martinez’s poll has her leading Denish 50 percent to 40 percent. That poll, conducted Sept. 11-13 by the GOP firm Public Opinion Strategies for the Martinez campaign, surveyed 600 likely voters has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
While the memo that accompanied Martinez’s poll stated that Denish “is losing ground, as Martinez makes critical gains among key sub-groups including Independent women and Hispanic voters,” the Denish campaign says its poll shows otherwise.
Denish’s polling memo states that the Democratic candidate has a 21-point lead in the northern part of the state. In addition, it states that Denish “has begun to make up significant ground with Hispanics and now leads Martinez by 17 percentage points with Hispanics, up from a 9 percentage point lead in August.”
“While Denish is not quite where she needs be with Hispanics, this movement has put Denish on the right trajectory with this group,” the memo states.
Denish Campaign Manager Oren Shur included his own take on things when he sent the poll memo to reporters.
“While the Martinez for Governor campaign works diligently to spin numbers, the reality is that the New Mexico Governor’s race remains extremely close,” he wrote in the e-mail. “Needless to say, that means this race is a toss-up. Every public poll released on the race has reached the same conclusion, with Albuquerque Journal poll by Brian Sanderoff calling the race ‘up in the air.’”
Of course, Shur means every poll but the new Martinez poll.
Shur ended his e-mail with this:
“As New Mexicans continue to learn about Susana Martinez, we’re confident that they’ll continue to see her for who she really is: a typical Republican politician who will side with the powerful corporations, not on the side of New Mexico’s families.”
Update, 2:10 p.m.
The Martinez campaign pushed back against Denish’s push-back by saying it’s “quite confident” in its polling and releasing a chart of its internal polling from the primary. The chart shows that the campaign’s final internal poll was within two points of where the race finished.
The Martinez campaign also noted what’s stated at the end of the polling memo it released today:
“In 2009, POS partners were named ‘Pollsters of the Year’ by the American Association of Political Consultants for polling conducted on behalf of Scott Brown for Senate in Massachusetts and Bob McDonnell for Governor in Virginia.”