{"id":13544,"date":"2010-02-21T23:26:47","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T06:26:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=13544"},"modified":"2010-02-23T00:12:37","modified_gmt":"2010-02-23T07:12:37","slug":"domenici-leads-in-new-poll-but-many-remain-undecided","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/02\/domenici-leads-in-new-poll-but-many-remain-undecided\/","title":{"rendered":"Domenici leads in new poll, but many are undecided"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Pete Domenici Jr.<\/p><\/div>\n

A new poll conducted by students in a government class at New Mexico State University shows Pete Domenici Jr.<\/a> with a large lead in the Republican gubernatorial primary, but an even larger number of people undecided.<\/p>\n

Domenici is leading in both name recognition and preference among Republicans who voted in one or both of the last two primaries, according to the poll conducted by 28 students enrolled in a political research skills course taught by Jose Z. Garcia.<\/p>\n

When asked if they knew any of the Republican candidates for governor, 36.3 percent of those surveyed recognized Domenici, while 21.6 percent recognized Allen Weh<\/a>, 18.2 percent recognized Susana Martinez<\/a>, 16.7 percent recognized Doug Turner<\/a> and 7.9 percent recognized Janice Arnold-Jones<\/a>. Some 46 percent were unable to identify any of the candidates.<\/p>\n

Then, asked if there was \u201ca candidate you intend to vote for, or that you are leaning toward,\u201d 29.3 percent picked Domenici, while 11.5 percent picked Martinez, 7.4 percent picked Weh, 6.8 percent picked Turner and 2.5 percent picked Arnold-Jones. Some 42.6 percent said they weren\u2019t sure.<\/p>\n

The survey of 444 Republicans who voted in one or both of the last two Republican primaries was conducted from Feb. 9-13 and has a margin of error of 5 percentage points. The list of phone numbers called was provided by Research and Polling \u2013 the company that polls for the Albuquerque Journal \u2013 and the poll reached every county in the state, according to the poll memo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the first publicly released poll of the GOP gubernatorial primary.<\/p>\n

Garcia predicts a Domenici\/Martinez showdown<\/h3>\n
\"Susana<\/a>

Susana Martinez<\/p><\/div>\n

In his analysis of the results, Garcia considered whether Domenici\u2019s lead was primarily due to high name recognition because of his father, former U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici.\u00a0Garcia looked at respondents who recognized both the names of Domenici and his closest opponent on the preference question \u2013 Martinez \u2013 and found that 40 percent preferred Martinez, while 25 percent preferred Domenici, 12 percent preferred another candidate and 12 percent were undecided.<\/p>\n

That, coupled with other factors, led Garcia to predict that the race could come down to Domenici and Martinez.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgain, the low sample size does not permit definitive conclusions, but this reduction, when combined with the relatively low performance of Weh in the preference question despite his relatively high name recognition (higher than Martinez\u2019s) and the relatively low performance of Turner and Arnold, suggests \u2013 other things being equal \u2013 this is likely to become a two-person race in the next few weeks between Domenici and Martinez,\u201d the poll memo states.<\/p>\n

However, Garcia said in an interview that the high number of undecideds means there is still \u201ca great deal of room for anyone of the candidates to surge ahead.\u201d Still, he has predicted all along that Martinez would be a significant factor<\/a> in this race.<\/p>\n

A couple of things are worth noting: The poll memo isn\u2019t clear about where the 52 respondents who recognized both Domenici and Martinez are from, but Martinez has her own base in Do\u00f1a Ana County, where she is the district attorney.<\/p>\n

In addition, it\u2019s worth noting that Domenici led among all gender and ethnic groups, including Hispanics \u2013 of whom 37 percent said they support or are leaning toward Domenici compared to Martinez\u2019s 18 percent.<\/p>\n

Peter St. Cyr contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new poll conducted by students in a government class at New Mexico State University shows Pete Domenici Jr. with a large lead in the Republican gubernatorial primary, but an even larger number of people undecided.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[108,107],"class_list":["post-13544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","category-uncategorized","tag-2010-election","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13544\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}