The Analysis Phase

If you’re reading this, there is exactly zero chance you don’t know what happened on Election Day. To recap, with the interest of brevity in mind: The Democrats retook the U.S. House and Senate, they kept every statewide office in New Mexico — with a cast of mostly new characters — and expanded their advantage in the state House to a supermajority. Their proposed changes to the state Constitution are happening, too. 
In most instances, the margins at the polls were massive. 
We haven’t made any live TV on Election Night — or any other night, for that matter — here at NMPBS in several years. (Though, you may have heard NMiF Host Nash Jones and me doing some live hits on KUNM Tuesday night before the polls closed.) So, what is a show like New Mexico in Focus, where elections are central to our mission, to do given that we air three days after the votin’s done? 
How about assemble a big group of political experts and local journalists to explain how and why the results came in as they did, then look toward the future at what they’ll mean for New Mexicans in the days, weeks, months and years ahead? 
I hope you said yes, because that’s exactly what we did. 
This week’s episode begins with a relatively quick trip through some of the results. To help bring those to life, our crew got out to a bunch of watch parties on Election Night to capture the sights and sounds from some of the winners and losers. Yes, we have a lengthy clip from Democratic Gov.-elect Deb Haaland, who made history Tuesday night when voters overwhelmingly chose her as the nation’s first Native American woman governor. 
Then the analysis starts. 
To help us break things down, we leaned on the expertise of folks who will be familiar to NMiF viewers. 
Our politics pros are, as it happens, both refugees from the two major political parties: PR executive and former Naval officer Merritt Allen, who for 36 years proudly called herself a Republican, then fled the GOP after reading its 2024 platform; and Eric Griego, who served on the Albuquerque City Council and in the state Senate as a Democrat, then left the party a decade ago and now teachers public policy and political science at the University of New Mexico. 
The journalist team includes one of our own, NMiF Politics Correspondent Gwyneth Doland, plus Source NM’s Joshua Bowling and Shaun Griswold, who covered the elections for High Country News and Buffalo’s Fire.
Nash led these deep dives into the election results, repercussions and recriminations, as always, with poise and precision. 
Enjoy! 
-Jeff Proctor, Executive Producer