A new poll finds that Republicans Gary Johnson and Mitt Romney are the candidates with the greatest support in New Mexico in potential matchups with President Barack Obama next year.
And overall, the poll from the left-leaning Public Policy Polling finds Republicans narrowing the gap in the state against the Democrat. Obama’s leads against Republicans are significantly smaller than they were when Public Policy Polling last polled New Mexico in February.
In the new poll, Johnson trailed Obama by three percentage points, 46 percent to 43 percent. Romney trailed 49 percent to 42 percent. Tim Pawlenty trailed 51 percent to 36 percent. Michele Bachmann trailed 52 percent to 37 percent. Herman Cain trailed 52 percent to 36 percent. Sarah Palin trailed 56 percent to 36 percent.
The new poll of 732 New Mexico voters was conducted from June 23 to 26 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
From the poll memo:
“While independents gave the President leads of 25-51 points in the previous survey, and voted for him by 15 over McCain (according to exit polls), he now leads by only 16-26 against the more prominent candidates and trails Johnson by nine with unaffiliated voters. The president has also slipped a little with his own party, which makes up more than half of voters. While he was pulling 73-86% of Democrats in February and losing only 12-19% of them to the Republicans, he now locks up only 70-80% of his partisans and erodes 13-21%. But there is more crossover support on both sides; both Obama and McCain won 91% of their respective parties, and the president has bumped up from a 10% to a 16% approval rating with Republicans since February, and jumped from 7-12% of their vote to 10-18%.”