Ignoring the previous several posts... 
here is some information dealing with actual State Legislative Elections. 
All data publlicly available somewhere or another, but not assembled of course.
NM Statewide House Districts. All those intense colors are unopposed incumbents. Count 'em up and get depressed at the lack of competition. The four districts with hatches on them were gains from the other party, but as there were two each the overall balance remains.
[snipped for space]
so it looks like there was a lot of state legislative election action down South. I'm guessing Democrats lost the two seats because of the retirement/death of dixiecrat dinosaurs. Why did the GOPers got knocked off in the Las Cruces area?
Yeah, oddly enough the South was the most interesting part of the night.
Your Democratic dixiecrat retirement guess is correct for one seat - NM-54, where Joe Stell retired from the Carlsbad-Artesia-rural seat and a Rep picked it up. Likely to stay Rep.
NM-61, a razor-thin flip, was a bit of a surprise, as Dem Donald Whitaker, easily the most conservative Democrat in the state House, fell in a conservative Hobbs-Lovington-Eunice-Jal seat he had held for some time. I suppose the district caught up with him, or maybe there was a local issue this time (there certainly wasn't a movement toward Reps in general
). Likely to stay Rep if Whitaker doesn't run again.
NM-37 has been getting closer as Dona Ana's population has grown and the flip to the Dems from retiring Rep William "Ed" Boykin in this Las Cruces district was probably the result of the wave, which seems to have been stronger in Dona Ana this year. Probably going to be close for a while yet, but the Dem should hold it.
NM-53, the fall of Rep Terry Marquardt from his Las Cruces-to-Alamogordo district, is a complete surprise to me. I need to find out what happened down there.
Hey, matching open-seat flips and matching incumbent-defeats...
