NM Redistricting: New Mexico's Democratic-run legislature passed a new congressional map over the weekend, making some changes to a previous iteration that lawmakers had introduced last week (and had received preliminary approval in a committee). The state House also passed a map for its own districts aimed at improving Native representation, while a Senate committee replaced a map that shared the same goal with one designed to avoid double-bunking Republican incumbents, earning the opposition of tribal leaders; its final fate is not yet clear.
The congressional map, which now goes to Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, still intends to create three seats that Democrats can all win. The final version seeks to balance out the 1st and 3rd Districts on a partisan basis compared to the initial map, making the 3rd a little bluer by having the 1st take in some more rural areas in eastern New Mexico while the 3rd sheds turf on the outskirts of Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
Compared to the existing map used for the previous decade, the new boundaries dramatically reconfigure each district to transform the 2nd from a solidly Republican seat into a light-blue swing district. Under the old lines, the 2nd voted 55-43 for Donald Trump in 2020 and supported him 50-40 four years earlier; with the new border, it would have backed Joe Biden 52-46, according to Dave's Redistricting App, and Hillary Clinton 48-42.
This transformation is achieved by splitting up Albuquerque, about 95% of which was in the reliably blue 1st District under the old map. Now, about a quarter of the city—including its most heavily Latino southwestern quadrant—is in the 2nd. To compensate, the revamped 1st extends further into the suburbs north of the city as well as rural areas in the middle of the state. As a result, it drops from 60-37 Biden to 56-42 Biden.
The 3rd undergoes a similar change, giving up some of those suburbs north of Albuquerque to the 1st while grabbing a swath of dark red territory in the state's southeast. Likewise, it falls from 58-40 Biden to 54-44 Biden (or about Biden +11 without rounding). Local politics might offer a keener lens, though: The 3rd now includes a large swath of the area known as "Little Texas," which is home to much of the state's oil industry. That in turn could pose new challenges for Democratic Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (for more, see our NM-02, NM-03 item below).
A majority of the voting-eligible population of the redrawn 2nd is now Latino, up from a plurality, while the 1st shifts from a white plurality to a white majority. The 3rd retains a white plurality that’s just narrowly larger than the Latino voting-eligible population, though it would have one of the largest populations of eligible Native voters of any district in the country, around 18%.