For The Washington Post

Maryland Principal Impersonation

The Washington Post

combo of MD 6th District candidates

Prince Georges County Public Schools Superintendent Millard House II and County Executive Angela Alsobrooks visit Hyattsville Middle School on the first day of school in the new building on Monday, August 28, 2023. 

Maryland Governor Wes Moore Holds a Bill Signing Ceremony

Senior Living Facility-Shooting

Juvenile Justice Maryland

A photo collage featuring images of Stephanie Gilbert, her ancestor Oliver Gilbert, the white farmhouse at Richland Farm

She cherished the home where her family fled slavery. Then a stranger bought it.

zebra-king-socialshare


"Turning Pain Into Purpose: Say My Son's Name," a play by Strong Azz Mothers

FBI Headquarters,  J. Edgar Hoover Building - Washington, DC

The Johns Hopkins Hospital

iStock

other

Ancient dolphin skull found in Maryland

Calvert Marine Museum

Women who have filed harrasement complaints. 

Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Can you spot bad financial advice on TikTok? Take our quiz.

5 myths about Social Security as the program faces a funding crisis

Social Security has to be fixed. But you still need your own savings.

Haiti’s plight is a case study in the ‘responsibility to protect’

No, Apple, people do not want tech to crush everything in its path 

The urgent air defense lessons of April 16 

Man, 91, shocks tiny firehouse with $500K gift: ‘Nobody knew how much I’d saved’

Retired cop meets abandoned baby he helped 23 years ago: ‘What are the odds?’

I used to dismiss my mom’s advice. Then I found a note she wrote before she died.  

Ted Leonsis remains interested in buying the Nationals

Senator will block RFK site bill unless team honors family of logo creator

Nationals-White Sox rained out; Josiah Gray edges closer to return

Woman who punched crocodile to save twin awarded medal by King Charles

Trade pact would be a bonanza for Africa — if it can be made to work

14 dead after massive billboard in Mumbai collapses on gas station

The wacky, grueling bike race that captivates a Midwest college town

Biodegradable fabric might be the next best thing in clothing

Are home prices still rising? See how prices have changed in your area.

Biden once nearly died of an aneurysm. Risky surgery changed his life.

Election 2024 latest news: Primary elections today in Maryland, Nebraska, West Virginia

Michael Cohen outlined a crime. Did he prove that Trump committed one?

How the authoritarian Middle East became the capital of Silicon Valley

These four searches show how Google is changing

OpenAI wants users to act natural around ChatGPT

Ask Amy: What if the mysterious mourner at my dad’s memorial is my brother? 

Miss Manners: My relative’s memoir was poorly written and boring

Carolyn Hax: Is it ‘charming’ to stage a surprise wedding at a family reunion?

Tired of overcrowded national parks? Here’s how to go backcountry camping.

Pete Buttigieg’s view from the middle seat

Airlines are trying to stop Biden from enforcing ‘junk fees’ rule

Angela Alsobrooks Wins Maryland Senate Seat 

Michael Robinson Chavez

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 <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/tablet/2024/03/20/march-5-12-2024-washington-post-university-maryland-poll-maryland-voters/" target=_blank>Washington Post-University of Maryland poll</a>.

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.

The poll finds Trone with a narrow lead in the primary race for the reliably blue seat vacated by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/05/01/ben-cardin-retire-maryland-senator/" target=_blank>retiring Sen. Ben Cardin </a>(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 <a href="https://www.fec.gov/data/candidates/senate/?q=S4MD00319&election_year=2024&cycle=2024&election_full=true&is_active_candidate=true" target=_blank>$23 million</a> 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.

“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 <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/tablet/2024/03/20/march-5-12-2024-washington-post-university-maryland-poll-maryland-voters/" target=_blank>Post-UMD poll</a> 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.

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 <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/01/23/larry-hogan-maryland-governor-legacy/" target=_blank>record-high</a> 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.

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 <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/joe-biden-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Joe Biden</a> over <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Donald Trump</a> by <a href="https://elections.maryland.gov/elections/2020/results/general/gen_results_2020_4_001-.html" target=_blank>33 percentage points in 2020</a>, one of the largest Democratic margins in the country, and the state has not sent a Republican to the U.S. Senate since 1980.

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.”

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 <a href="https://www.vanderbilt.edu/csdi/spring2018slides.pdf" target=_blank>Vanderbilt University poll</a> 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 <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_Senate_election_in_Tennessee,_2018" target=_blank>lost the general election</a> to Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R) by 11 percentage points.

Both leading Democrats in Maryland have focused on how a Republican-controlled Senate could affect Maryland voters, especially on <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/abortion/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">abortion</a> 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” <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/03/07/larry-hogan-ivf-protections-senate" target=_blank>when pressed by a reporter</a>.

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.”

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.

University of Colorado, BS in journalism

University of Colorado, BA in biochemistry

Erin Cox is a politics reporter covering Maryland. She joined The Washington Post in 2018 and has written about Maryland since 2007.

Erin Cox

Vanderbilt University, BA in political science

University of Maryland, MS in survey methodology

Scott Clement is the polling director for The Washington Post, conducting national and local polls about politics, elections and social issues. He began his career with the ABC News Polling Unit and came to The Post in 2011 after conducting surveys with the Pew Research Center's Religion and Public Life Project.

Scott Clement

S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University, M.A.

Lateshia Beachum is a reporter covering Prince George's County. She joined The Washington Post as a general assignment reporter in 2019. She previously worked for The Center for Public Integrity. 

Lateshia Beachum

Rutgers University, MPP

University of Maryland, BA in communication

University of Maryland, BA in government and politics

Emily Guskin is the polling analyst at The Washington Post, specializing in public opinion about politics, election campaigns and public policy. Before joining The Post in 2016, she was a research manager at APCO Worldwide and prior to that, she was a  research analyst at the Pew Research Center's Journalism Project.

Emily Guskin

washpost

Poll: Hogan (R) holds double-digit lead over Democrats in deep blue Md.

the-washington-post

Local news

D.C. politics

Va. politics

Maryland Politics

prism://prism.query/site,/local/maryland/md-politics&limit=20

Maryland government and Maryland politics news, including Maryland's governor's office, the general assembly, state lawmakers and proposed legislation.

prism://prism.query/local-states,/local/maryland,/local/maryland/md-politics,MD&limit=20

Maryland

The Washington Post is your source for Maryland news. Find breaking news, political reports, school information and check Maryland traffic and crime reports.

Fast, informative and written just for locals. Get The 7 DMV newsletter in your inbox every weekday morning.

D.C., Md. & Va.

The Washington Post offers breaking local news, weather and traffic information for the DC, Maryland and Virginia metro areas, plus information about school districts, crime, government, religion, the lottery,restaurant reviews and obituaries.