By Adam Pagnucco.
A new poll by Public Policy Polling on Maryland’s U.S. Senate race shows Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks with 45% of the vote, former Governor Larry Hogan with 34% of the vote, lesser known candidates with 5% of the vote and 16% undecided. (In a two-person race, Alsobrooks gets 48% and Hogan gets 40%). That’s not a great result for Hogan, but when you delve into the crosstabs, it’s even worse. Let’s start digging.
First, the poll surveyed 635 Maryland voters on June 19-20 and has a margin of error for the full sample of +/-3.9%. There are no sample sizes or margins of error for crosstabs, so I’m sticking to broad groups. With that caveat, here are a few tidbits.
Hogan’s favorability is not sufficiently translating into votes.
Alsobrooks’s favorability is 43%. Her voting percentage is 45%, a close match. Hogan’s favorability is 50%, but his voting percentage is only 34%. That means one-sixth of the electorate likes Hogan but still won’t vote for him, a big handicap.
Women are in big for Alsobrooks.
Alsobrooks has a 20-point advantage among women (49-29%) and a one-point advantage among men (42-41%). Believe it or not, that’s not her most significant demographic edge.
Black voters are in even bigger for Alsobrooks.
Hogan leads Alsobrooks among White voters by 10 points (43-33%). But among Black voters, who are 30% of the poll’s sample, Alsobrooks leads Hogan by 59 points (73-14%). Given that only 1%(!!!) of Black voters in the poll plan to vote for Donald Trump, it’s not so easy for Hogan to increase his support among them when he shares the big red R behind Trump’s name.
Seniors don’t look like they are going to save Hogan.
If the race were close and seniors leaned towards Hogan, I would like Hogan’s chances more. After all, seniors regularly have higher turnout rates than younger voters. But that’s not the case in this poll. Alsobrooks leads by 8 points among voters age 18-45, 9 points among voters age 46-65 and 19 points among voters older than 65. It’s awfully hard to win a race when you trail among seniors by 19 points.
Hogan needs to improve his standing among voters of all parties.
In a prior column, I wrote that Alsobrooks’s path to victory was simple: consolidate all the Democrats, who are a majority of Maryland’s statewide general electorate. Alsobrooks has 45% of the total vote in this poll and 74% of the Democrats, so she is close. Nine percent of the Democrats are undecided, so if she picks them up, she is on the verge of winning.
Hogan’s status is much more precarious. His 34% of the total vote comes from 70% of the Republicans, 42% of the independents and 15% of the Democrats. That’s not close to good enough. A winning scenario for him looks like this: 90% of the Republicans, 65% of the independents and 25% of the Democrats. He has a lot of work to get there.
The poll’s breakout by party.
Looks folks, this is just one poll and we are more than four months away from the general election. But even if Hogan accumulates a big money advantage over Alsobrooks, this is an illustration of just how hard it will be for him to win.