Watching the NM returns, I thought there was one interesting statistic that wasn't being reported, that could tell us a lot about how the Land of Enchantment will track in November.
Everybody's talking about the multiple close races--but nobody seems to be paying any attention at all to the aggregate vote totals. And that's where the real story is.
There will be approximately 114,000 people voting in the Republican Senate primary; since Tom Udall is running unopposed for the Democratic seat, there's only the local House races to draw Democrats to the polls.
In NM-01 (Wilson's seat), there will probably be about 53,000 votes cast in the Democratic primary--versus 45,000 for the Republicans. In NM-02 (Pearce's seat), 36,000 Democratic votes versus 35,000 Republican votes. And in NM-03 (Udall's old seat), 23,000 votes for the Republicans compared to 37,000 on the Democratic side.
(Note that these are all projections based on votes cast as of about 10.30 MT, rounded up based on number of precincts remaining, courtesy of results from KOAT.com.)
So, to sum up, the Republicans have a Senate primary to run, but will have about 23,000 fewer votes than the Democrats in their separate House races. Based on this, it's pretty clear that Democrats--even in the right-leaning NM-02--are a lot more excited about choosing their candidates than the Republicans are.
It's not going to be anything close to a sure thing for Democrats to sweep the three seats in NM--but based on tonight's results, it's at least reasonable to even fantasize about it.