Unofficial results show Las Cruces voters chose Eric Enriquez as city’s new Mayor

LAS CRUCES, New Mexico (KVIA) -- Thousands of Doña Ana County residents showed up to vote on Tuesday November 7, and the unofficial results of a tightly-contested race show former Las Cruces Fire Chief Eric Enriquez is the choice for the city's new Mayor.

ABC-7 covered the race extensively, which by the end of the night, showed Kasandra Gandara with a 6% lead over Enriquez.

But the city's ranked choice voting system, which gives voters the option to rank candidates by preference, showed that after round six of votes, Enriquez got the lead on Gandara by about 4%, bringing in a total of 52.32% of the votes, over Gandara's 47.68%.

"One of the things we always stress is that election results are unofficial until they're official and they're not official yet," said Doña Ana County Clerk, Amanda López Askin.

"We do a county level certification and that will hopefully happen Tuesday, but potentially Friday, just depending on when we're done with this process. And at that point, we send everything to the Secretary of State's office and then they do another deep dive and affirm all of what we have given them," she added.

ABC-7 is speaking with Eric Enriquez, the unofficial winner of the Mayoral race.

We'll bring that to you on the news at 4, 5 and 6.