A left turn at Albuquerque

By Saul Bloodworth

I stil don't know who will win the election (although I'm guessing, at this point, Obama) but I do know who will win New Mexico: Obama. Why? Because I'm currently traveling in New Mexico. Saturday, Obama had a rally in Albuquerque, at the University of New Mexico, and pretty much everybody who lived there, came.

Ok, nearly everybody. Albuquerque has a population of about 450.000 people, that would make, I guess, 200.000 voters. I attended the rally with a friend, we came one hour early, had a hard time fining a (legal) parking space, and also found the university gates packed. There was a long, long, long line (and a fairly broad one, too), we kept walking towards the end of the line until we were close to Santa Fé, the end never came. We decided to give up, walked back and we (ok, me) found an opportunity were we could sneak in, cutting the line short.

There were still some 10.000 people in front of us. We waited another hour, eventually, the people broke down the barriers to the sports field because security took too long, so everybody got in. And everybody was in a good mood. First, Bill Richardson, the Governor, spoke (whom my friend does not like because he reminds him of Bill Clinton), Richardson counted 300.000 people, that was probably a little over the top, but who cares.

Anyway, if that is already the number of supporters actually showing up and standing in line for three hours, you can guess that the number of voters will be through the roof. McCain also had a rally, only thousand people came. To be fair, they had to be pre-screened, and only committed Republicans got access. But still. Anyway, gotta run.