I find it very hard to believe this is correct. SUSA sometimes is accurate but in this case I would be very suspicious. This state is about as heavily Demo as they come. I was surprised Bob Ehrlich got elected in '02. Maybe he is leading a slight GOP resurgence. But they have not elected a Republican US senator there since 1980, and the state legislature is overwhelmingly Dem. Not to mention Clinton and Gore easily carried the state. Still, if this poll is even close to accurate it's got to be giving the Dems heartburn.
I'm thinking that maybe they will not be able to cheat like they have in previous years. You have moved to computer voting machines. I think they'll have trouble stealing votes in B-more. I still think Kerry will win by a lot, but I think it'll be tighter than in 2000.
Dear TNCMAXQ,
Actually, Maryland sorta looks like the US as a whole.
There are 23 counties and the independent Baltimore City. Of these 24 jurisdictions, only three are reliably Democrat. They happen to be the three largest, Montgomery County, Prince Georges County, and Baltimore City.
But the rest of the state, with about half the population, votes Republican at the national level.
You still have a lot of old-time Democrats at the state and local level. We actually have a significant number of, get this, PRO-LIFE Democrats in the state legislature. In fact, the previous Speaker of the House, Cas Taylor, was a pro-life Democrat.
There are a lot of gun-rights, pro-life, pro-death penalty folks. Kind of the last vestige of Southern Democrats, I guess.
Over time, I suppose more and more of them will become Republicans, or will be replaced by Republicans. It'll take a while, Maryland is still pretty much a one-party machine state at the local/state level, but that masks a significant growing conservative minority that occasionally verges on the majority.
sitetest