The 2000 United States presidential election in New Mexico took place on November 7, 2000, and was part of the 2000 United States presidential election. Voters chose five electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.
New Mexico was won by Vice PresidentAl Gore by a 0.06 percent margin. It was the closest state in the entire presidential election by raw vote margin (366 votes), which was even closer than Florida. News outlets called New Mexico for Gore at approximately 10:21 p.m. (EST),[1] but later retracted the call when it was determined to be too close to call.[2]
Gore was not declared the winner of the state until November 17.[3][4][5] This would be the first election in which New Mexico failed to vote for the winning candidate since 1976 and the first time since its statehood in 1912 that it voted for a different candidate than Nevada. Although New Mexico did vote for the popular vote winner in this election. As of 2020, this is the last time that New Mexico voted more Republican than the nation as a whole. Bush became the first Republican to win the White House without carrying the state of New Mexico since its statehood, as well as the first to win without Bernalillo County.
In the days following the election, when the disputes and recounts began, New Mexico, despite having a razor-thin margin, went largely ignored. Its five electoral votes alone would not have changed the overall outcome in the Electoral College if it were switched from Gore to Bush.[6][7] The respective campaigns ended up paying little attention to recount efforts in New Mexico, and focused their efforts solely on Florida. Likewise, the media focused very little on the New Mexico recount. After the final count was certified for Gore on November 30,[7] the Bush campaign did not challenge the results.[7]
