Poll Puts Maryland Democrats In the Lead

The poll is not a prediction of Election Day but a portrait of the Maryland political landscape completed 12 days before voters go to the polls. Last-minute developments, campaign spending, get-out-the-vote efforts and enthusiasm for the candidates all could affect the final results.

Especially important will be the African American turnout, which heavily favors Democrats. Blacks make up 28 percent of Maryland's adult population and 25 percent of likely voters in the poll, but some strategists wonder whether the actual turnout will be that high.

Invading Ehrlich Territory

Ehrlich's hopes rest with voters such as Patrick Aldrich, a 39-year-old account manager from Owings Mills in Baltimore County.

"I just find his manner down-to-earth and real. He's not the typical politician," Aldrich said last week, as his 2-year-old son squawked in the background. "His views are things that I agree with."

White, male, parent, in a suburb distant from Washington -- Aldrich represents the kind of voter with whom Ehrlich connected four years ago when he defeated then-Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D).

But O'Malley, whom the poll shows leading 55 to 45 percent, has cut into Ehrlich's support among such voters and draws strong allegiance from groups that have traditionally supported Democrats but that strayed four years ago.

"These results show that Marylanders want new ideas to help their families, not more dirty tricks and misleading attack ads from a desperate politician," said Hari Sevugen, O'Malley's communications director. "They want a governor who will fight for Maryland families, not one who will fight for the special interests and George Bush."

O'Malley retains support in the overwhelmingly Democratic Washington suburbs, and he also cuts into Ehrlich's previous strongholds in the counties surrounding Baltimore, according to the poll. O'Malley has a 26 percentage point advantage among women, who narrowly supported Townsend four years ago. Many of those who described themselves as moderates abandoned the Democrats in 2002; O'Malley has a 15 percentage point advantage among moderates in the current poll.

The poll continued to show Ehrlich with relatively high favorability ratings and job approval numbers, and unlike in a Post poll in June, a majority of Marylanders now believe that the state is headed in the right direction.

Respondents were just as likely to describe O'Malley as honest, a strong leader and someone with a vision for the state's future. Voters also said they thought O'Malley would do as well as Ehrlich confronting the issues of crime, taxes and the state economy and gave him a slight advantage on the issue they said was most important for the next governor: public education.

O'Malley was seen as more likely to understand "the problems of people like you" and had a nearly 2 to 1 advantage on "working effectively with the state legislature."

Ehrlich has bombarded the state with ads that skewer O'Malley's leadership of Baltimore, blaming him for the city's failing schools and high crime rate. But voters' views of how things are going in Baltimore did not change from the Post poll in June, and of those who said O'Malley had changed the city, 44 percent said it was for the better, as opposed to 9 percent who said he'd made things there worse.