The race to challenge incumbent Gov. Larry Hogan (R) in Maryland's 2018 election is wide open, according to a new poll, with nearly half of Democrats having no preferred candidate.

Former state attorney general Douglas F. Gansler — who said last week that he will not run in the primary — appears to have more name recognition among Democrats than any of the declared candidates, the poll by Goucher College finds.

Twenty-eight percent of Democrats said they would consider voting for Gansler, compared with 21 percent for Prince George's County Executive Rushern L. Baker III, 17 percent for Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz and 14 percent for former NAACP president Ben Jealous.

Others in the Democratic field garnered single digits.

Eight percent of respondents said they would consider casting a ballot for state Sen. Richard S. Madaleno Jr. (Montgomery); 6 percent said they would consider voting for Baltimore attorney James L. Shea; 5 percent for tech entrepreneur Alec Ross; and 2 percent for Krishanti Vignarajah, a onetime policy director for former first lady Michelle Obama.

Nine percent of respondents said they would consider voting for policy consultant Maya Rockey­moore, who has said she is weighing a run. She is the wife of Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), a longtime congressman from Baltimore whose name is known throughout the state.

The poll referred to the prospective candidate as "Maya Rockeymoore Cummings."

Forty-four percent were un­decided or had no preference when asked who they would support if the election was today.

Mileah Kromer, a Goucher College political science professor and the director of the survey, said the results show that the June 2018 Democratic primary is up for grabs.

"Folks don't know a ton about these candidates," Kromer said. "The negative is that there's a long way to go for any of them to win, but the positive is that it's anyone's race."

Whoever emerges with the Democratic nomination would presumably face Hogan.

The governor is broadly popular across party lines but has lost some ground this year in terms of how many Marylanders say they plan to vote for him in 2018.

A Goucher poll released Monday showed that 51 percent of Marylanders are at least leaning toward voting to reelect the governor, compared with 57 percent who said the same in a February survey.

Fifty-five percent of respondents in Goucher's survey of Democrats said they want a "more progressive" candidate to win the party's gubernatorial nomination, compared with 34 percent who said they want a "more moderate" candidate and 8 percent who said they prefer a "more conservative" Democratic nominee.

Twenty-six percent of respondents identified education as the most important issue, followed by the economy and jobs (21 percent), racial and social justice (16 percent), health care (15 percent), the environment (7 percent), taxes (6 percent) and transportation and infrastructure (5 percent).

The poll, conducted Sept. 14-18, questioned 324 Maryland Democrats and has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.4 percentage points.