By Marie Horrigan, CQ Staff

CQ Politics Presidential Race Rating: No Clear Favorite

Electoral Votes: 5

New Mexico is a bellwether of the political evolution of the Mountain West, a conservative-leaning region where Democrats have made serious inroads after years of Republican advantage.

As one of just three states that flipped from one party in 2000 to the other in 2004, New Mexico (and Iowa) went from narrowly favoring Al Gore over Bush in the first contest to choosing Bush over John Kerry in the second, while New Hampshire did the reverse. The outcomes of those contests in New Mexico were excruciatingly close: Gore won in 2000 by just 366 votes, or one-tenth of a percentage point, while Bush’s 2004 margin was fewer than 6,000 votes, or eight-tenths of a percentage point.

John McCain ’s top advantage in the state’s contest, according to Heath Haussamen, a political analyst from Las Cruces, is that he is a fellow Westerner and is more in line than Barack Obama with New Mexico voters on several key issues, including gun owners’ rights. A candidate’s stance on Second Amendment issues is an important litmus test in New Mexico, where residents can apply to carry a concealed weapon, Haussamen said.

McCain’s personal military background and his position as ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee also could help him in a state that has military facilities and federal nuclear research laboratories. “It’s going to be hard-fought, and McCain has got such a natural appeal, I think, to some constituencies — veterans, which are a big portion of the population here, some of the retired people,” said New Mexico political analyst Joe Monahan.

Obama has had to do some work to do to unite his party base. Perhaps the biggest key to his chances is whether he succeeds at galvanizing above-average turnout from a Democratic-leaning Hispanic constituency that is the nation’s largest per capita, at more than two-fifths of the state’s population.

As in most states’ nominating contests, Obama was outperformed among Hispanic voters by Hillary Rodham Clinton , who needed that support to pull off her razor-thin 49 percent to 48 percent win in the state’s Feb. 5 “Super Tuesday” Democratic caucuses.

But by midsummer, national polling showed Obama pulling support from upward of two-thirds of Hispanics in his race against McCain. He is aided in New Mexico by the early and strong support he drew from Gov. Bill Richardson , whose Mexican-American heritage would have made him the nation’s first Hispanic president had he succeeded in his campaign this year.

Dynamic Congressional Races

The presidential race is far from the only reason, though, why New Mexico will be a key state to watch this fall. Popular Republican Sen. Pete V. Domenici is retiring, so his seat is open, as are all three House seats because the incumbents all entered the Senate race.

Democrat Tom Udall took his party’s nomination without opposition, and Steve Pearce gained the Republican slot with a narrow and hard-won June 3 primary win over Heather A. Wilson .

Democrats are fired up for the Senate contest, which has similar dynamics to the presidential race, Haussamen said. “There are a lot of Republicans in New Mexico who are not as excited about their Senate candidate as the Democrats are about theirs, which is true of national polls in the presidential race, in which Obama supporters are a lot more fired up than McCain supporters are,” Haussamen said.