Tag Archives: Polarization

Winners and Losers

Winners

1. Larry Hogan. Not only did he win but he completely shocked everybody by winning by a greater margin than Bob Ehrlich in 2002. A stunning victory by a Republican in Deep Blue Maryland. Democrats just didn’t think it was possible.

2. Polarization. The Democrats who lost in the General Assembly are almost all moderate or conservative Democrats: Sen. Roy Dyson, Del. David Rudolph, Del. Norm Conway. The Democrats will be more liberal and the Republicans more conservative. Expect even more acrimony between the Governor and the General Assembly than when Ehrlich was in office.

3. Chris Christie. I know one governor who will be endorsing him 2016. While Maryland doesn’t carry a lot of weight in the Republican Party, I am sure that Christie will welcome its delegates.

Losers

1. Martin O’Malley. The loss of his chosen successor undercuts completely his (vice?) presidential campaign. His legacy has now been repudiated by his own state at the polls.

2. Lieutenant Governors. The curse continues. Blair Lee lost in the primary, and now Katheen Kennedy Townsend and Anthony Brown have lost in the general. Perhaps Ken Ulman should be relieved.

3. Purple Line and Red Line. Governor-Elect Hogan has said he will not proceed with these projects. Why on earth should he throw billions at light-rail for areas that will never vote for him? He’d rather spend the money on roads.

4. Orange is Not the New Black. I am sure that Heather Mizeur was completely sincere in her Baltimore Sun opinion piece. But many who are not her diehard fans will view it as a cynical ploy to get her name before the voters even as she threw Anthony Brown under the bus while avowedly endorsing him. The most memorable moment of the campaign will not be forgotten.

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Partisan Breakdown of County Governments

CountyCouncils

Pre-2014 Election County Executives and Councils

Maryland has fewer subdivisions than almost any other state with just 23 counties and one independent city. Except Baltimore City, all elect their legislatures–Councils or Commission–at the same time as the gubernatorial election. Starting in 2016, Baltimore’s City will be in sync with the presidential election cycle.

Besides legislatures, eight counties with home rule charters directly elect a county executive, functionally equivalent to that of mayor–the title given to Baltimore City’s executive. Frederick County’s voters approved its charter in 2012 and will elect its first county executive this year.

The above table shows the pre-2014 election partisan breakdown of county executives and legislatures for all counties and Baltimore City, highlighting one party counties based on the party of the legislature with red indicating Republican and blue Democratic counties .

Nine have only Republican legislatures (and executives): Allegany, Calvert, Caroline, Carroll, Cecil, Frederick, Garrett, Queen Anne’s, and Washington. Four are solidly Democratic: Baltimore City, Charles, Montgomery, and Prince George’s.

Most Republican counties are small, though Calvert, Carroll, Frederick, and Queen Anne’s are fast-growing exurbs. Calvert, Carroll and Queen Anne’s are all solidly Republican, though more overwhelmingly in Carroll than Calvert or Queen Anne’s. Frederick leans Republican but has been moving towards the Democrats. Whether the trend will continue strongly enough to push the County away from the GOP remains to be seen.

Three counties and Baltimore City sit in the Democratic camp. All are overwhelmingly Democratic with Republicans having next to no chance.  In Prince George’s, only one Republican has so far filed for a Council seat. Democrats would still hold a bare majority on the Montgomery Council even if every Republican candidate won. Republicans have filed for only two seats on the Charles Commission.

The remaining eleven counties have split councils or commissions, though many lean heavily to either the Democrats or the Republicans. Harford, St. Mary’s, Talbot, Wicomico, and Worcester list towards the Republicans, while Baltimore County and Howard favor the Democrats. Anne Arundel leans GOP but seems increasingly marginal for a place expected once to be a Republican bastion.

Due to the plentiful rural Republican counties, there are 75 Republican legislators compared to 65 Democrats in very blue Maryland. Must make politics for officer elections at the Maryland Association of Counties (MACO) interesting.

 

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How Polarized is the General Assembly?

The Monkey Cage has a great post that compares legislative polarization all 50 states. The first graph (credit to Boris Shor) shows polarization averaged across both chambers from 1996 through 2013. As you can see, Maryland is the fourteenth most polarized state in the country, though not that terribly far above American average.

statepolar

Polarization is greatest in California where Democrats are very liberal and Republicans are very conservative, as shown in Shor’s second graph. In this graph, the vertical axis measures conservatism and the horizontal axis shows the year. The graph not only makes it possible to compare the parties within states but across states.

polar by chamber

The change in polarization within each chamber over time is more easily assessed with yet another graph produced by Boris Shor and Nolan McCarty that charts polarization over time for both chambers in 49 states and Nebraska’s unique unicameral legislature.

polarization_chamber_years2

In Maryland, polarization in the House has been relatively flat over the last two decades. Polarization has increased in the Maryland Senate. A bump up around the time of the 1998 elections increased Senate levels to those of the House. The Senate is now slightly more polarized than the House after another smaller increase in Senate polarization after the 2002 elections.

In Congress, heightened polarization has been driven much more by Republicans than Democrats, though Democrats are more liberal than in the past. The changes in General Assembly polarization appear driven more or less equally by both parties. Over the 18 years in the study, Democratic liberalism and Republican conservatism each increased by roughly 0.25 on the scale. (A very close look indicates that Republican conservatism probably increased slightly more than Democratic liberalism.)

These trends are not terribly shocking to followers of Maryland politics. More moderate Republicans like former Del. Connie Morella and Sens. Jean Roesser and Howard Denis no longer sit in the General Assembly, as many moderate Republicans have become Democrats and Montgomery County Democrats are no longer willing to vote for even moderate Republicans in sufficient numbers. Republicans have also seen several mainstream conservative senators defeated by more conservative delegates in primaries.

Conservative Democratic numbers have dwindled. Places that elected conservative Democrats now usually choose Republicans. Though a few, like Del. David Randolph, hang on in territory that is tough for Democrats, the days of the Eastern Shore electing very conservative Democrats like Sen. Frederick Malkus are over.

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