SANTA FE–John Kerry and President Bush were running virtually neck and neck late Tuesday, with the challenger capturing 49.8 percent of the vote and the incumbent 49.1 percent with one-third of the counties reporting.
Still, Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson was predicting victory. He said Kerry was doing better in certain areas of the state than Al Gore did in 2000, when the then-vice president won New Mexico by 366 votes.
Republicans, however, were not ceding this swing state.
Officials indicated that a long period of counting lay ahead because of the 191,000 paper absentee ballots to process. The tabulation could last days, if not the full 21 days state law allows for determining an official count, officials said.
“Don’t hold your breath,” New Mexico’s secretary of state, Rebecca Vigil-Giron, said late Tuesday night.
Balloting across New Mexico was setting records. Election officials forecast the highest percentage for a turnout, 75 percent. In addition, the state of 1.8 million saw its voter rolls increase to 1.1 million, with 200,000 new registrants added since January.
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Combine the two events, and they would add up to the largest voter participation ever in the state’s history, Vigil-Giron said.