An aggressive campaign by opponents of a proposed ban of late term abortions in ABQ continues to pay off, according to our final exclusive, scientific poll of the Tuesday special election.

We asked 494 likely voters via automated phone calls Thursday night: "Do you support or oppose the ABQ special ballot measure to ban most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy?"

By a margin of 53% to 41%, respondents said they were against the proposal. 6% were undecided.

The margin of error for the survey is plus or minus 4.4%.

A special election was called when abortion foes gathered some 27,000 petition signatures to force it on the ballot.

In our first survey of the special election conducted November 6, likely voters polled were against the abortion ban 56% and 37% were for it. Undecided was at 6%.

Veteran pollster Bruce Donisthorpe of BWD Global consulting, who has conducted highly accurate surveys for New Mexico Politics with Joe Monahan since 2008, had this analysis:

The tide is not benefitting the pro life movement as we near Election Day. Those in favor of the ban are going to have to go outside the pool of regular, likely voters, to win this race and they don't have a lot of time. The opponents of the proposal continue to identify and deliver voters against the measure, particularly in the Democrat and independent columns.

Democrats oppose the measure by 74% to 19%, Republicans supported it 67% to 29% and independents opposed the proposal by 54% to 40%. 

Those numbers are similar to our first survey except for Republicans where it appears amendment supporters have done effective targeting and brought up their GOP support from our last survey.

Strong opposition to the proposal continues to come from female voters. 65% oppose. The abortion ban does better with men, but it is still losing with them by 55% to 41%.

The abortion ban is doing best on the Westside where it leads 49% to 47%. It is doing worst in the SE and Mid NE Heights where it trails 68% against to 25% for.

The problem for those in favor of the measure is that many early votes have been cast and they have been losing those. Because of that, on Tuesday--the actual Election Day--supporters of the measure will have to do much better than 50% among those voting that day in order to win. That may be a tall order.

Complete crosstabs for the survey are posted here.

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(c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2013. Not for reproduction without permission of the author