Making Sense of the 2024 Election

There exists a near-endless list of places you could go and read an overwritten think-piece on how this year’s presidential election turned out as it did. This newsletter is not on that list, and there’s a reason for that: Our show is called New Mexico in Focus, and our responsibility is to the people who live in this state. 

So, that’s how we approached this week’s episode — with an eye toward how the results in local, state and, yes, national elections could impact New Mexicans’ lives. Obviously that includes the top of the ticket, but the presidential race is not the whole story. 

We asked three folks many NMiF viewers will recognize to help us make sense of what happened on Election Day: Dan Boyd, capitol bureau chief for the Albuquerque Journal, Merritt Allen, who helms Vox Optima Public Relations, and former Democratic state senator turned UNM political science professor Dr. Eric Griego. In three parts, Senior Producer Lou DiVizio led the group through a conversation we hope will give New Mexicans a better understanding of what comes after this election and how that will impact their lives. 

This is the lens we’ll continue to use as we move forward in covering the election’s aftermath. 

And I was glad to spend a little time this week speaking with New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, who has been administering elections here for the strong part of two decades. This is challenging work, particularly given the current political climate, and I appreciate the way Maggie talks about the difficulties alongside why this remains so fundamental to democracy. 

Lastly, I want to thank the team at NMPBS for making this week’s show happen at all; a thick blanket of snow, power and internet outages, a full-day closure at UNM (through which we are licensed) and other factors meant it almost didn’t. But the show went on because these folks made it so: Joey Dunn, Robert McDermott, Benjamin Yazza, Lou DiVizio, Antonio Sanchez, Noah Eichstaedt and RJ Torres. 

– Jeff Proctor, Executive Producer