With control of the U.S. Senate in play, voters in deep-blue Maryland favor Republican Larry Hogan by double digits over potential Democratic rivals, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.
The former governor left office with high job-approval ratings and is better known than those competitors, but he faces a crosscurrent Democrats hope to exploit: The poll found Maryland voters said by a 20-point margin that they prefer Democratic control of the U.S. Senate.
Hogan’s surprise entrance into the race last month upended what had been largely seen as a contest between Rep. David Trone (D-Md.) and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D). The Post-UMD poll finds that if the general election were held today, voters say they would support Hogan over Trone, 49 percent to 37 percent; and Hogan over Alsobrooks, 50 percent to 36 percent.
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The poll finds Trone with a narrow lead in the primary race for the reliably blue seat vacated by retiring Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.): 34 percent of registered Democrats support Trone while 27 percent prefer Alsobrooks. The primary race remains wide open despite Trone’s spending of more than $23 million to Alsobrooks’s $2 million. Nearly 4 in 10 Democratic voters — 39 percent — haven’t yet picked a primary candidate.
Nearly half of registered voters overall have no opinion of Trone, and a majority have no opinion of Alsobrooks.
The national attention Hogan drew to what had been a sleepy competition prompted Democrats to cast the May 14 primary race as a question of who could better help the Democratic Party control the U.S. Senate. The messaging could make it harder for Hogan to build the cross-party coalition of Republicans, independents and moderate Democrats that had delivered him statewide victories before.
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“The big issue for the Democrats right now is that many people in the state don’t know who either of these candidates are,” said Michael Hanmer, a University of Maryland political science professor and director of the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, which conducted the poll with The Post.
“They seem to be doing fine in the places where people know them,” he said. “But large, large numbers of people don’t know who they are. … It’s just around the corner now for the primary, but there’s still plenty of time for both of them to do things differently.”
The Post-UMD poll of 1,004 registered Maryland voters was conducted March 5-12, and found that 55 percent of voters say they want Democrats in control of the Senate, compared with 35 percent preferring Republicans.
It also finds a clear majority of voters from both parties think highly of Hogan, who promoted a bipartisan brand in a state where registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans 2 to 1.
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Sixty-four percent of registered voters have a favorable view of Hogan, compared with 33 percent for Trone and 26 percent for Alsobrooks. About 2 in 10 have unfavorable views of Hogan and Trone with slightly fewer saying the same about Alsobrooks. Only 13 percent held no opinion of Hogan, a two-term governor who left office with record-high job approval ratings.
“I don’t look at these results and see him as an underdog,” Hanmer said. “He looks pretty good.”
The contest is still fluid, with the general election months away and Democrats yet to coalesce around a nominee.
The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points among all voters and 4.5 points among registered Democrats. The survey contacted a random sample of registered voters statewide, with 64 percent interviewed by live callers on cellphones, 15 percent on landlines and 21 percent online after receiving a cellphone text invitation.
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Democrat Jerome Tidwell, 61, of Prince George’s County, is among the undecided. He said he doesn’t know much about what Trone stands for, only that Trone has used his fortune to fund his campaign. He also said he’d be willing to consider Hogan in November, contrasting a response from Hogan’s office with Alsobrooks’s office when Tidwell sought traffic improvements to an intersection where someone was killed.
“It’s not zero all the way [on Alsobrooks], but I’m doing some research,” said Tidwell, who works in finance. “I’m looking at [candidate web] pages and looking to see what exactly David Trone’s bringing to the table. He’s doing a town hall meeting, so when he does that, I’m going to be attending that and having questions for him.”
Maryland voters elected Joe Biden over Donald Trump by 33 percentage points in 2020, one of the largest Democratic margins in the country, and the state has not sent a Republican to the U.S. Senate since 1980.
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Yet the poll finds a significant share of Maryland voters say they want Democratic control of the Senate but would nonetheless vote to send Hogan, who would likely caucus with the Republicans.
Nearly 1 in 5 voters — 18 percent — say they prefer a Senate controlled by Democrats but would vote for Hogan over either Trone or Alsobrooks. Two-thirds of those voters are Democrats, and more than half consider themselves “moderate,” the poll finds.
David Bartgis, 43, supports “Hogan, not even a question” for the Senate, even though he wants Democrats in control of the chamber.
“I don’t trust the Republicans right now, pretty much on anything,” said Bartgis, an art dealer and unaffiliated voter from Frederick. But he trusts Hogan, whom he called “probably the best governor we’ve ever had.”
“Honestly, I don’t believe he would be a vote down the line with Republicans or with Democrats,” said Bartgis. “He’s always seemed like he’s not toed the party line. He seemed from the start that he was not a culture-warrior conservative. He seems like he does his own thing. I’ve always respected that about him.”
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But many other Hogan supporters would not send him to the Senate if it meant Republicans gain power. Democrat Stephanie Sandler, 52, thought very highly of Hogan as governor, but said she worries he can’t be the same type of politician amid the “extremist” Republicans in the U.S. Senate.
“At the state level he was great,” said Sandler, an executive secretary from Glen Burnie. “He was very bipartisan, he worked both sides of the aisle. But what I’m concerned about, once he gets to D.C., that would change. … he’s either going to be held hostage and he won’t be able to get anything done, or even worse, he’s somehow going to be convinced to caucus with the extremists’ group of the Republican Party.”
Popular governors in other states have hit similar partisan crosswinds as they sought federal office. In 2018, for example, former Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen ran for U.S. Senate as a Democrat. A Vanderbilt University poll that spring found him with 84 percent name recognition and a 67 percent favorable rating among voters who were aware of him. Bredesen’s 52 percent favorable rating among Tennessee Republicans then was slightly lower than Hogan’s 61 percent favorable mark among Maryland Democrats today. Bredesen lost the general election to Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R) by 11 percentage points.
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Both leading Democrats in Maryland have focused on how a Republican-controlled Senate could affect Maryland voters, especially on abortion rights. Hogan says he personally opposes abortion but says he would not alter existing rights. In an interview two weeks ago, Hogan declined to answer whether he would codify national abortion rights into federal law, saying “that wasn’t a yes or a no” when pressed by a reporter.
The issue resonates with Akelah Stroud, 42, who considers herself left-leaning but admires how Hogan governed and said she benefited from his program helping first-time home buyers with student debt. Hogan siding strongly with the hard right or not codifying Roe v. Wade would certainly push her to withdraw any support for him.
“Once you start taking people’s rights away and things that have been in place for over 70 years, that’s worrying to me as a woman, and it’s also worrying to me as a minority,” Stroud said, “because I believe it’s like once they start taking away stripping things away from women, then the next thing is they’re stripping away rights for minorities.”
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Trone and Alsobrooks each lead Hogan among voters in the D.C. area, which they represent, while trail him the rest of the state.
In the primary, among registered Democratic voters in the D.C. suburbs, Alsobrooks and Trone are tied with 34 percent supporting each and with 32 percent undecided. Each fare best among their respective geographic bases: Alsobrooks is leading Trone 53 percent to 19 percent in Prince George’s, while Trone leads Alsobrooks 49 percent to 16 percent in Montgomery County.
Statewide, Trone has more support from White voters — 47 percent to 17 percent for Alsobrooks, who leads him among Black voters, 38 percent to 23 percent.
Alsobrooks, who has endorsements from heavy-hitters in Maryland’s political establishment, is seen positively by a 3-to-1 margin by registered voters in her county, including Prince George’s resident Ariel Barnes, 30.
Barnes said she likes the accountability Alsobrooks took for the condition of schools, even though the issues predated the county executive’s tenure. And Barnes, who works in finance, said Alsobrooks appears to be more approachable and relatable as a mother and everyday citizen than the high-profile men in the race.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being successful, but there’s something to be said about someone who isn’t far removed from what it’s like to live in Maryland,” Barnes said. “I’m not in Larry Hogan’s tax bracket. I’m not in Trone’s tax bracket.”
Trone also benefits from outsize support in his home county, where he is seen positively by a more than 2-to-1 margin, including by Montgomery resident Alejandra Ona, 50. She said she’s voting for Trone because Democrats support what she values and she doesn’t want to see a Republican in office.
“I don’t have any information on Angela Alsobrooks,” said Ona, an accountant. “I guess she doesn’t have much funding. I don’t see ads or anything.”
The primary will be the first time Ona casts a vote for Trone, she said, adding that the primary is “more important than the main election in November to make sure we keep electing Democrats.”
Sonia Vargas contributed to this report.
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