Like many Democrats in Maryland, I was absolutely shocked on election night when the early results were showing Republican candidate Larry Hogan leading Democratic candidate Anthony Brown. And I was even more shocked when Hogan actually won.
Surely this shouldn't have happened in Maryland, a blue state, where Democrats have a 2:1 advantage in voter registrations. After all, this is a state where efforts to strengthen gun laws were successful and which repealed the death penalty.
Many people here suspected that Hogan won because the Democrats stayed home. It turns out that they were right. According to a recent poll by the Washington Post and the University of Maryland, Marylanders who were either not registered to vote or did not vote in the 2014 general elections would have vote for Brown (46%) over Hogan (35%).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
This stands in sharp contrast to the actual election results of Hogan (51%) to Brown (47%).
In the election, Brown, Governor O'Malley's Lt. Governor, was the pick of the Democratic Party establishment. And it was largely assumed that he would win. However, many people I talked to just weren't that enthusiastic about Brown. While they indicated that they would vote for him in the General Election, they really wished Heather Mizeur, a progressive candidate who was underfunded and not taken seriously by the mainstream media, had won the primary.
That many Democratic voters in Maryland would have preferred someone else to Brown was confirmed by the poll results. The Washington Post poll found that 37% of Democrats were dissatisfied with their choice of candidates, with 14% indicating that they were very dissatisfied.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
In an article discussing the poll results, writers John Wagner and Scott Clement of The Washington Post state:
To reclaim the governorship in 2018, Democrats will need a candidate with a crisper message who is more capable of motivating the party’s base, analysts and strategists say.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
I only hope the Maryland Democratic Party establishment is listening. Or the voters in Maryland may once again elect Larry Hogan over the Democratic candidate in 2018. And it is the next Governor that will oversee restricting in Maryland, a state with a 6-2 Democratic Congressional Delegation and a legislature with a large Democratic majority.