NM-2 · House

The district, in brief

New Mexico's 2nd district covers southern and western New Mexico, including the cities of Las Cruces, Carlsbad and Alamogordo, as well as the southwestern suburbs of Albuquerque, on the map first used in 2022. The text gives no presidential results; the facts record a 2024 presidential baseline on these lines of -1.9 points (two-party margin for the Democrat) and a two-party House margin of 4.16 points for the Democrat in 2024.

The incumbent is Democrat Gabe Vasquez, re-elected with 52.1% of the vote in 2024 and unopposed in his primary with 47,123 votes. The Republican nominee is Greg Cunningham, a retired police officer and the party's nominee for New Mexico's 29th state House district in 2022 and 2024, who won the primary with 84.5% (26,836 votes) over Jose Orozco, who had withdrawn and endorsed him but remained on the ballot. Former U.S. representative Yvette Herrell declined to run and endorsed Cunningham. As of June 30, 2026 Vasquez had raised $3,784,102 with $2,378,703 on hand; Cunningham had raised $1,510,080 with $794,187 on hand.

Decision Desk HQ (August 12, 2026), the Cook Political Report (January 15, 2026), Inside Elections and Sabato's Crystal Ball (both June 19, 2025) list the seat as D. Two district polls are recorded: SurveyUSA (August 28 – September 2, 2026, 554 likely voters) had Vasquez 46%, Cunningham 43%, undecided 11%; co/efficient, a Republican firm (April 26–28, 2026, 879 likely voters), had Vasquez 43%, Cunningham 41%, undecided 16%, with a generic ballot in the same poll tied at 45%.

A paragraph quoting a model forecast from the day this brief was written is omitted; the current forecast is at the top of this page.

The facts, each beside its sentence

Not in the source: The model's basis says no district polls, but the text carries two district polls (SurveyUSA and co/efficient) that the model does not use.; The text gives no presidential results for the district; only the facts' presidential baseline is available.; No endorsements are listed for either nominee beyond Herrell's and Orozco's for Cunningham.; No ratings finer than 'D' are given (no Lean/Likely/Safe); Silver Bulletin is not listed.; The general-election fundraising table spells the Republican 'Gregg Cunningham'.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as a0ef27230726; written by claude-fable-5-1 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.

Who holds the seat now

Gabe Vasquez (Democrat), in this chamber since 2023, 2 terms. Committees: House Committee on Agriculture; House Committee on Armed Services.

From the congress-legislators dataset (CC0), archived as ae8cb9477c48. For a Senate race this lists both of the state's senators; the one whose term ends in the election year holds the seat on the ballot. For a House district redrawn for 2026 it is the member elected under the old lines with this number, who may be running elsewhere; the dossier above names who is running here.

How it has voted for president

A shift of 4.7 points toward the Republicans from 2016 to 2024. county returns placed on the current lines by 2020 block population; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.

Who are the voters?

Of about 452,757 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 53.1% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 53.0% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 0.1 points toward Republicans. Group shares are estimated from how results vary across the state's census tracts (ecological inference, anchored to Pew's 2020 validated-voter figures) and calibrated to this district's actual 2020 vote; turnout is the Census survey's state rate by race and national rate by education, whose state samples carry margins of several points.

Not answered here: how each group will vote in 2026. These are 2020 preferences; this profile is description, not yet an input to the forecast.

The money

FEC bulk candidate summaries through June 30, 2026; $388 of independent expenditures for or against these candidates this cycle (FEC Schedule E, types 24E and 24A), which is the parties' and outside groups' own revealed view of whether this seat is in play.

The district in numbers

ACS 5-year 2023, the Census Bureau's own tabulation of this district (118th Congress lines). Unemployment is the BLS county series placed on the district by block population, not seasonally adjusted, so changes are same-month comparisons. Income, transfers and jobs are BEA county accounts placed the same way, compared with the average district. Every other figure is a named column of a named table in the Bureau's summary file, archived before it was read. This is what a reader knows about a district before looking at a poll; the model does not yet use it, and whether it should is a registered question.

Who is favoured, and by how much?

The 90% interval runs from +1.2 to +28.4 points, D-R. It is wide because this district has never been polled.

What is this built on?

A model trained on every contested House race 2012-2024 predicts this district's lean from its own record: presidential and House results on the current lines, incumbency, both candidates' prior offices, outside and party money before 1 October, demographics and public-assistance shares from the Census release before the election, local unemployment and income, and religious tradition. The national margin comes from presidential approval, the economy, the midterm penalty and the generic ballot corrected for its measured lean. Draws share national and state errors, so the seat total and this district come from the same simulation.

Not answered here: district polls, which are not yet folded in.

Why does the model say this?

Each figure is how far this district's predicted lean moves when that one feature is set to the typical value across 2026 districts, everything else held: PAC money balance: 8.8 pts toward the Democrat; experience gap (+4 levels, D minus R): 4.1 pts toward the Democrat; 2024 presidential lean (R+0.4): 2.9 pts toward the Democrat; Democrat's experience (incumbent): 1.7 pts toward the Democrat; snap share income (1.6%): 1.6 pts toward the Democrat.

How sure is it, and of what?

Total sd 8.34 points, made of the seat's own volatility 90%, correlated polling error 10%. The decomposition is stored with the forecast rather than reconstructed, so a probability whose dominant input is a placeholder is visibly that.

Not answered here: a nowcast. 'If ballots were cast today' needs something that observes today, and for a House district nothing does. Publishing the election-day figure under both labels would make one forecast look like two.

How was this number made?

Run 6f211e6f-2bdc-4dda-8f72-81fc628dab0b, house_district_prior/0.2.0, as of 2026-10-02. Promoted by a pre-registered gate: on 2016-2022 its Brier score was 0.036 against 0.049 for the previous method, and on a single 2024 run 0.023 against 0.032 (experiments/district_gate_result.md, with an independent review).