Democratic Senator Ben Ray Luján has won a second term in New Mexico. The Associated Press called the U.S. Senate race for Luján on Tuesday night, November 3, 2026, in Santa Fe and across New Mexico, defeating Republican Larry Marker — a challenger who reached the general-election ballot only as a write-in candidate — in a state Republicans have not carried in a Senate election since 2002. NBC News also projected Luján the winner. The call came early in the count, with barely a third of the expected vote in, on a margin so wide that the remaining ballots could not change the outcome. All election-night figures are unofficial until New Mexico election officials certify the results.
The count behind the call never tightened. In the Associated Press tally Luján's 162,242 votes were about 61 per cent of the votes counted for the office, against Marker's 102,528. The Senate balance-of-power tracker compiled from NBC News and AP data via NPR showed the same picture at 10:18 p.m. Eastern: Luján on 134,283 votes (61.6 per cent) to Marker's 83,834 (38.4 per cent), a margin of 23.1 points with 29 per cent of the expected vote in. The AP's following update, with 793 of 2,204 precincts reporting, put Luján at 165,225 votes, still called. New Mexico's polls had closed at 7 p.m. Mountain Time.
An incumbent who was never in danger
Luján, a Democrat who has served in the Senate since 2021, was seeking a second term, and forecasters treated the race as settled long before election day: the Cook Political Report rated it Solid D in its final rating on November 2. In the June 2 Democratic primary he won renomination with 182,360 votes (84.2 per cent) against Matt Dodson's 34,289 (15.8 per cent). Polling through the autumn told the same story — surveys since August had put Luján ahead by between 53–38 and 54–36, and a late-October review by New Mexico pollster Brian Sanderoff, reported by KSFR, predicted Luján 53 per cent to Marker's 37 per cent. The election-night margin ran wider than any of those polls.
Marker's path to the ballot explains much of the gap. No Republican qualified for the primary ballot in New Mexico this year, so Marker — a former oil and gas operator — was nominated as a write-in candidate, advancing after 31,220 write-in votes were recorded for him in the June primary. A write-in campaign starts with almost no organisation, ballot presence or name recognition against a sitting senator, and his general-election campaign never closed that distance in a state where Republicans have not won a Senate election since 2002.
Thirty-five Senate seats were on the ballot on November 3 and Democrats needed a net gain of four to take the majority. Holds in safe states such as New Mexico do not move that maths by themselves — but losing one would have ended the Democratic path on the spot. Luján's early, emphatic hold let his party spend election night watching the battlegrounds — North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan, Maine and Texas — where control will actually be decided.
Luján's return also keeps seniority in place on the committees where he sits. Communications Daily reported on election eve that Luján, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Communications Subcommittee, was expected to retain his party's top slot on that panel if re-elected — a post that puts a New Mexico senator at the centre of debates over broadband, telecom and media policy that reach every state, including the rural and tribal communities of New Mexico itself, where connectivity gaps are a standing issue. His first term began in 2021; the second will run from January 2027 to 2033.
The state that voted
New Mexicans voted on far more than the Senate on Tuesday: the ballot also carried an open governor's race — Democrat Deb Haaland against Republican Gregg Hull — all three of the state's U.S. House seats and the rest of the state ticket, on a night when 35 Senate seats, all 435 House seats and 36 governorships were decided across the country. For a small state of 33 counties and 2,204 precincts, the Senate race was the one contest whose answer was known almost as soon as the polls closed, while the governor's race and the House fights ran later into the night.
For the Punjabi diaspora and for truckers, New Mexico is corridor country: Interstate 25 runs the length of the state through Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and Interstate 40 crosses it east to west, carrying freight between California, Arizona, Texas and the Midwest. The senators those corridors send to Washington vote on the highway funding, freight and immigration questions that decide how that freight moves — which is why a safe-seat hold in a small state still lands on this desk's page, with the result verified to the vote.
Source: Awaaz Punjab USA desk — corridor context for Interstate 25 and Interstate 40 in New Mexico
What happens next
Counting continues in New Mexico until every precinct and late-counted ballot is in, after which state election officials will certify the result; with a lead of nearly 60,000 votes on a third of the count, no recount path was visible on election night. Luján's second six-year term begins in January 2027, when the new Congress convenes, and runs to 2033. The larger question of the night — which party controls the Senate he returns to — will be settled by the battleground races still counting, not by New Mexico, whose answer arrived early and emphatically.