Race Analysis

11/3/14 -- This race seems to have closed late, with both parties funneling in money at the last minute. One suspects the undecided voters here should go Democrat, and the GOP was disappointed here in 1994...but not in 2002.

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Maryland is increasingly a city-state -- all of its congressional districts are anchored partially in either metropolitan Washington, D.C., or Baltimore. The state has long been a Democratic stronghold. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, a Democratic machine in Baltimore combined with voters on the culturally southern Eastern Shore to form a Democratic majority. In the later 20th century, the Democrats lost the Eastern Shore but found increasingly receptive voters in the suburbs of D.C. Post-Civil War, the state has elected only six Republican governors, and only one has managed a second term.

The last Republican governor, Bob Ehrlich, won an open seat against Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a disappointing candidate for Democrats, in 2002. Ehrlich had a tempestuous relationship with the Democratic legislature, and in 2006 he was defeated by Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley. O’Malley handily won a rematch with Ehrlich in 2010.

Anthony Brown, O’Malley’s lieutenant governor, won the Democratic primary, and will face off against Republican Larry Hogan. In a Democratic state like Maryland, Brown has a significant edge, notwithstanding the headwinds Democrats in general are facing this year and Brown’s oversight of the state’s disastrous Obamacare website.