If the polling trends hold like this into the fall, Obama has already won Arizona. There will be no home state advantage this time around.
If Romney wins NM, then he's already won IL, WA, OR, the entire Northeast with the possible exception of Vermont, and maybe even CA. So basically, everything.
And Gore only won New Mexico by 366 votes in 2000, and before that, from 1972-1992, a Republican always won New Mexico. Current governor's a Republican, governor before that a Democrat, and one before that a Republican.
But everyone's forgetting one big thing that's changed over the past decade. Look at the Latino community. Now look at how much the Latino community supports Romney. Given this current political climate, New Mexico would be more Democratic (in terms of large minority voting blocs that have a pretty high floor) than places like New York, due to the fact that there's a much larger Latino population, of which maybe 20% at this point support Mitt Romney.
Latino Population %:New Mexico: 42.1
New York: 15.1
Illinois: 12.3
Connecticut: 9.4
Rhode Island: 8.7
Oregon: 8.0
Washington: 7.5
Massachusetts: 6.7
Whites are more fickle with voting Democratic, even in blue states. It's extremely unlikely that Romney can regain enough traction in the Latino community to even get back to McCain levels, much less Bush 2004 levels. Even though on paper, New Mexico looks less Democratic than some of these states, the new demographic is in control and the Republicans have made themselves dead to the Latino community on a national level. It's the same way that my home state gave Obama 47% of the PV in 2008, despite only 1 in 4 whites voting for him.
Poll
