Bernalillo County primary turnout tops 24.7% as independent voters join in

Bernalillo County’s primary was busy enough that officials were watching polling places fill up long before the last ballots were cast. By 6 p.m. on June 2, turnout in the county had reached roughly 24.7%, already ahead of the county’s pace in the 2022 primary and a sign that more voters were engaging both at the polls and before Election Day.

The surge came as New Mexico held its first primary under a semi-open system, allowing unaffiliated voters to choose either a Democratic or Republican ballot without changing their registration. That shift mattered in Bernalillo County, the state’s most populous county and a bellwether for statewide participation, where Clerk Michelle Kavanaugh said multiple polling sites saw more than 1,000 voters during the day and many locations were extremely busy.

Early voting and absentee requests pointed to the same pattern. Bernalillo County said that as of May 5, more than 21,000 voters had requested absentee ballots, showing strong interest well before Election Day. Statewide, the New Mexico Secretary of State’s unofficial results later showed 346,467 ballots cast out of 1,408,181 eligible voters, for turnout of 24.60%, with 100% of precincts reported.

The broader statewide numbers suggest the county’s heavy participation was part of a larger surge, not just a local anomaly. By 5 p.m. on June 2, more than 307,000 ballots had been cast statewide, already exceeding the total reached at that point in the 2022 midterm primary. Another report showed nearly 19,000 unaffiliated voters had cast ballots before Election Day and were choosing Democratic ballots about three times as often as Republican ones, while a separate tally put the number of independent voters at about 33,000, or roughly 9% of the state’s independent electorate.

For Bernalillo County, the election mechanics appear to have met a more competitive political climate. The ballot included high-profile races for governor and U.S. Senate, and the new rules gave independent voters a direct role in determining which candidates advanced. At polling places across Albuquerque and the rest of the county, that combination of contested races, easier ballot access for unaffiliated voters, and a strong early-vote pattern produced lines that were visible enough to suggest a broader test of turnout energy heading into November.