Hundreds of thousands of Maryland voters will head to the polls Tuesday to decide whether to re-elect Gov. Martin O’Malley or bring back his predecessor, former Republican Gov. Bob Ehrlich.
In the final day of their campaign, the candidates turned their full attention to energizing voter turnout.
O’Malley, who is leading by roughly 10 points in the latest polls, spent Monday in the voter-rich areas where he is most popular — Baltimore and Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. O’Malley and Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown hit about 16 destinations combined
across the three voter pools from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Ehrlich and running mate Mary Kane made five campaign stops — three of which were in Baltimore County, a bastion of Republican support for the former governor. Ehrlich and Kane also stopped in Annapolis and Rockville Monday morning.
Early voting numbers show the candidates have reason to worry about turnout, said Todd Eberly, an assistant professor of political science at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
Roughly 6.3 percent of all registered voters turned out during six days in late October when voters could cast early ballots.
More than 7 percent of Democrats voted early, as opposed to 6.3 percent of Republicans. In a state where Democrats outweigh Republicans 2 to 1, the slight disparity makes an Ehrlich victory seem less and less likely, Eberly said. About 3.5 percent of independents cast early ballots.
“The early vote doesn’t look nearly so promising,” Eberly said, referring to Ehrlich’s 2006 6–point loss to O’Malley. “Even if Ehrlich gets all the Republicans and all independents, he is still 70,000 behind O’Malley’s Democrats.”
But in Montgomery and Anne Arundel counties, turnout is expected to surge for voters interested in two local ballot initiatives.
Montgomery residents will vote on whether to kill a new fee for using an ambulance, and Anne Arundel voters will vote on whether to build a slots parlor at the Arundel Mills mall, the closest proposed slots site to the Washington area.
Voters also will decide on U.S. representatives in eight congressional districts — but only one district is up for grabs. In the conservative-leaning 1st Congressional District on the Eastern Shore, freshman Democratic Rep. Frank Kratovil is in a close rematch with Republican state Sen. Andy Harris. The candidates have been in a statistical dead heat for months, though some polls show Harris pulling slightly ahead.
