Midterm lessons for Maryland Democrats

originally posted on November 5, 2014

Some very interesting numbers from the Maryland State Board of Elections site:

• 1,645,678 voted in the governor race this year: 874,107 for Republican Larry Hogan, 770,511 for Democrat Anthony Brown.
• 1,608,418 voted in the comptroller race (so there was only a drop-off of about 37,000 votes); Democrat Peter Franchot received 1,004,689 votes.
• 1,592,933 voted in the attorney general race; Democrat Brian Frosh received 884,054.

In other words, if everyone who voted for the Democrats in the other statewide races had voted for Brown, the Democrats would have held the governorship, probably by a substantial margin. Instead, there was a huge amount of ticket-splitting.

So why the Brown drubbing? Well, it can't be chalked up to racism. Indeed, in 2012 Barack Obama received 1,677,844 votes in Maryland -- more than the total number of people who voted for all candidates in 2014.

It is also noteworthy that the turnout in 2010 was 1,857,880. So yesterday, we saw a drop-off from midterm to midterm of 212,202 voters. Brown lost by 73,596 votes.

So what lessons for Democrats? First, obviously, we need to figure out ways to get better turnout. Second, as shown by the numbers yesterday, we can't nominate candidates for the top spot who are utterly uninspiring and are unable to effectively defend their records and make the case for why they should be elected.