Prince George’s County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks (D) has pulled ahead of former governor Larry Hogan (R) in Maryland’s competitive Senate race with just over two months left before the November election, according to a poll released Wednesday.
In that speech, Alsobrooks shared details about her life and highlighted her 14 years of friendship with Vice President Kamala Harris, hoping to tap into the renewed enthusiasm among Democrats that has surrounded Harris’s presidential campaign.
Hogan, an early critic of Donald Trump who was a popular governor in deep-blue Maryland, has worked to cut into that excitement by continually reminding voters of his independent streak. The race is being closely watched across the country, and drawing donations from national groups, because if Republicans capture the seat, it could tip control of the closely divided U.S. Senate.
On Tuesday, Hogan’s campaign released a new ad that highlights some of his accomplishments during two terms and features images of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection while a narrator tells viewers that Hogan quickly sought to send in the state’s National Guard to “protect the Capitol.”
The new poll shows Hogan’s challenge in winning over enough voters during the next two months. While 50 percent of those surveyed said they hold a favorable opinion of him, only 41 percent said they would vote for him.
“Hogan is that unique politician whose appeal is broad and spread among the electorate rather evenly,” wrote Patrick E. Gonzales, the poll’s author.
But “for a Republican to win statewide in Maryland it always comes down to basic mathematics,” Gonzales wrote. “Can Hogan snatch away 30% of the Democratic vote to secure victory on November 5th?”
Alsobrooks has a different challenge: an enduring lack of name recognition among voters this far into her campaign. The poll found that 34 percent of registered voters do not yet recognize her name.
Even among Democrats, 17 percent don’t recognize her name, while among independents, 33 percent still don’t know who the Prince George’s County executive is, the poll found.
About 21 percent of Democrats surveyed said they would vote for Hogan.
Among undecided voters, 72 percent don’t recognize Alsobrooks’s name, while nearly 13 percent said they have no opinion of her. Just 16 percent of undecided voters held a favorable opinion of Hogan, while 61 percent said they were neutral about him, the poll found.
With the race speeding toward November, the two candidates have worked to define their opponents for voters.
Alsobrooks has tried to tie Hogan to Trump, including in one ad that features Hogan calling himself a “die-hard, lifelong Republican.” The same ad shows Hogan telling an interviewer — before Trump secured the GOP nomination for president this year — that he didn’t think Trump would win the party’s primary race, “but I’ll support the nominee” in November.
Hogan has since said he will not vote for either presidential candidate, though he has praised some aspects of Harris’s campaign.
His campaign has argued that Alsobrooks is too inexperienced to become a U.S. senator.
An ad paid for by a political action committee launched by John Bolton, a former national security adviser under Trump, paints a dark image of Prince George’s County and calls Alsobrooks “too soft” and “too inexperienced for dangerous times.”
Wednesday’s poll results were the second installment of Gonzales’s survey.
The first installment, released Tuesday, showed that Alsobrooks appears poised to benefit more from the enthusiasm in Maryland surrounding Harris.
The survey found that 56 percent of voters would cast a ballot for Harris, while 35 percent would vote for Trump.
Among independents, Harris led Trump by 2 points, while 26 percent of that group is undecided, the poll found.
The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, which applies to estimates for each candidate’s support.
