Sep. 28—With early voting set to begin in just over a week, Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller has a solid lead in his bid for an unprecedented third straight term, a new Journal Poll found.
The survey of proven and likely voters also found former Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White leading a pack of six challengers, potentially positioning himself for a run-off election against Keller.
However, more than one-third of voters surveyed said they still had not decided who they would vote for, which could give hope to Keller’s challengers in the run-up to the Nov. 4 local election.
“On the one hand, Tim Keller has a comfortable lead in a seven-way race,” said Brian Sanderoff, the president of Albuquerque-based Research & Polling Inc., which conducted the poll. “On the other hand, he’s a two-term mayor and there are still more voters who are undecided than there are voters who are planning to vote for him.”
In all, 29% of voters surveyed said they planned to vote for Keller, while 16% said they would vote for White. Trailing further back, Albuquerque city councilor Louie Sanchez and former U.S. attorney for New Mexico Alex Uballez both received support from 6% of voters surveyed.
The three remaining candidates — Eddie Varela, Mayling Armijo and Daniel Chavez — all had smaller support levels.
Keller, a former state senator and state auditor, has served as Albuquerque’s mayor since December 2017. He easily won reelection in 2021 and is seeking to be the first person to serve three consecutive terms as mayor.
But Keller has faced a steady stream of criticism from his opponents, specifically on the issues of homelessness and crime.
The mayor’s administration has touted a drop in violent crime rates over the last several years, but his police chief, Harold Medina, asked Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in March to deploy New Mexico National Guard members to Albuquerque to assist local law enforcement officers.
The governor granted the request, while declaring an emergency in the state’s largest city.
In his State of the City speech in August, Keller acknowledged the challenges posed by crime, homelessness, rising housing costs and guns in schools.
“If there were easy solutions to these long-term problems, I promise you, I would have fixed them in a heartbeat,” Keller said at the time, while insisting his administration was making progress on the issues.
Under Albuquerque’s city charter, the two top finishers in mayoral and City Council elections face off in a run-off election if the top finisher does not receive 50% or more of the votes cast. If it’s necessary, this year’s run-off election would take place Dec. 9.
Undecided voters could tip election
While some Albuquerque voters might be wary of another term for Keller, they haven’t necessarily flocked to other candidates.
White, who previously served as Albuquerque’s chief public safety officer and was a GOP congressional candidate, might also be having a hard time convincing some voters despite his second-place finish in the survey.
Despite being the best-known Republican in the race, White has struggled to consolidate the GOP vote in this year’s election, as only 38% of registered Republican voters surveyed said they planned to vote for White.
That could be due in part to White’s past ties to New Mexico’s cannabis industry — he sold his medical cannabis business four years ago — and the presence in the race of Sanchez, a conservative Democrat who received 12% of Republican support in the poll as he also appealed to voters concerned about crime, Sanderoff said.
Uballez, who has positioned himself as a progressive alternative to Keller, received more support from younger voters than did White. But Uballez’s support withered among voters age 50 and older, who tend to be more reliable voters.
Meanwhile, Sanderoff also said the fact that Keller was the only candidate to qualify for public campaign financing in this year’s race could also be a significant factor.
Buoyed by the more than $733,000 in public campaign funds he received after qualifying, Keller has maintained a significant advantage in campaign cash during this year’s election cycle.
The failure of other mayoral candidates to meet the qualifications for public campaign financing has made it harder for them to make their case to voters, Sanderoff said.
“The candidates who are not as well known lost the opportunity to spend money in August and September to increase their name recognition,” he said.
In all, the Journal Poll found 37% of voters were undecided or did not know who they planned to vote for.
When those undecided voters were asked which candidate they were leaning toward, most still said they were not sure. But with those who did express a “lean” factored in, Keller’s support in the survey rose to 35%, with White’s support at roughly 19%.
Early voting begins Oct. 7 at the Bernalillo County Clerk’s Annex only, with additional early voting sites opening Oct. 18.
Methodology
The Journal Poll is based on a random sample of 514 voters who cast ballots in the 2021 and/or 2023 local government election, and a sample of adults who registered to vote since January 2024 and who said they are likely to vote in the upcoming local government election.
To ensure a representative sample, Research & Polling Inc. sets quotas for race, gender and age, and weights by education level and party affiliation, if necessary, based on traditional voting patterns in local government elections.
The poll was conducted Sept. 19 through Sept. 26. The voter sample size of 514 has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points. The margin of error grows for subsamples.
All interviews were conducted by live, professional interviewers, based in Albuquerque, with multiple callbacks to individuals that did not initially answer the phone.
Both cellphone numbers (96%) and landlines (4%) of likely voters were used.