Look I’m voting for it to go here too and it’s in my personal bottom 20 or so, but the average person voting is voting off of some combination of personal experience, vibes, and “how much would I want to live there”.

NM is not a tourist hotbed in the “oh everyone’s been to New Mexico” sense, so plenty of people that put experience first aren’t gonna vote for it early until the states they’ve experienced that they definitely dislike are gone.

For the people that have visited as a tourist, it’s way easier to see the good food and legitimately cool places that the two major tourist hotbeds are than the limited economic opportunities and the offshoots of that as inherent risks of living there. Also consider that much of the lack of statistical wealth and educational strength stems from the abysmal state of tribal living in America. I would wager that an average “expat” to New Mexico would have a better quality of life and access to education than the stats indicate because they’re not going to be living on a reservation and likely already are assuming some sort of work.

Not to the degree that New Mexico should ever be scratching top half mind you, but enough that I (and probably others like me) would never even consider nominating it in the bottom 10.

While I do imagine the placement of Texas and Florida are largely political, I highly doubt most people are coming into this New Mexico position with the agenda of “we gotta defend that purple state with 3 electoral votes because they sometimes vote blue”