Jason Barton,  a freshman mechanical engineering major, watches the election results come in at the Anne Arundel Hall election party, one of several viewing parties on the campus.

Last month’s heated presidential election battle and current fiscal cliff negotiations on Capitol Hill show most of America is as closely divided as ever along partisan lines.

But in this state, it’s perfectly clear what direction voters are moving in. Electorally, the state has become one of the nation’s most liberal. And if election results mean anything, this campus is even more liberal than the rest of the state.

“Especially in recent years, I think the polarization of the parties has done nothing but help steer college students toward the Democratic Party,” said Tyler Grote, president of College Democrats at this university.

On Nov. 6, this state voted in favor of two initiatives popular with liberals: legalizing same-sex marriage and offering in-state tuition rates to undocumented immigrants who meet a set of requirements. In eight races for House seats, Marylanders elected seven Democrats. Both of the state’s senators are Democrats, as incumbent Ben Cardin won re-election easily. The state’s electoral votes have not gone to a Republican presidential candidate since 1984.

Some Republicans on the campus worry the state is becoming obsolete in the conservative movement.

“I think that Republicans have really just written off the state of Maryland,” said Allison Agazzi, president of the university chapter of College Republicans.

The trend in Washington holds true in Annapolis — Gov. Martin O’Malley, considered a rising star in the Democratic Party, is now being floated as a candidate for president in 2016. Between the state Senate and House of Delegates, Democrats hold 133 of 188 seats, a 71-percent margin and the third-largest majority after Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

Several factors, including demography and social issues, have placed Maryland in “a group of more liberal states,” especially among young voters, said David Karol, a government and politics professor.

Those traits classically befit a deeply liberal state, he added.

“If you look at the composition of the state and you look at party coalitions, I think that really tells the story,” Karol said.

Nationally, white voters favor Republican candidates over Democrats, while nonwhite voters tend to lean left.

“[Republicans] can’t run so much to the right. I think they have to offer appealing alternatives to a more diverse demographic,” said Stella Rouse, a government and politics professor.

This voting pattern hurts Republicans in the state because, Karol said, “Maryland is less white than the country as a whole.”

Compared to a national average of 72.4 percent, this state’s population was 58.2 percent white, according to the 2010 census — and that proportion is not going to rise, the Census Bureau estimated.

Minority groups, which tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic, make up the rest of the state’s population. At the time of the census, 30 percent of state residents were black, compared to 13 percent nationally.

While Maryland had only half the Hispanic population rate of the 50-state average, that figure is skewed by border states with higher immigrant populations.

The Latino population has been growing in this state and across the country, signaling greater voting numbers for the Democrats and more strain on Republicans.

Agazzi said her party needs to do more to reach out to minority voters.

“Especially with the Hispanic population growing as steadily and as quickly as it has been,” she said, “it’s a very integral part of the Republican platform that needs to be reshaped.”

The state is also predominantly urban, another trend Karol said favors Democrats.

Demography aside, though, Karol said an increasingly youthful national electorate has come to associate the GOP with negative perceptions of former President George W. Bush’s administration. On campuses such as this one, that constitutes a black mark for Republicans.

“Younger people are very marked by experiences and the context when they start to pay attention to politics,” Karol said.

Older voters, he added, are more likely to also associate Republicans with the prosperity of earlier Republican administrations. Not coincidentally, the GOP has recently done better among older voters than younger ones.

“[Older voters] may think of George W. Bush and his perceived failures, but they may also think of Ronald Reagan and his successes,” Karol said. “When they think of the Republican Party, it’s going to be some combination of the good times and the bad times.”

Among younger voters, though, Karol said Republicans face a significant image problem that stems from the younger Bush’s eight years in the Oval Office.

“People under 30 don’t see the same good times,” he said. “The wars [in Afghanistan and Iraq] dragged out, the economy collapsed. And even though the economy has been slow under President Obama, polls show that a lot of people really do blame the previous administration.”

To best mold a positive image in young voters’ minds, Rouse said, the GOP should become more youthful itself.

“They need to start with fresh minds and young, vibrant leadership in their party,” Rouse said.

However, Grote said policy, not personnel or history, was the driving force behind young voters’ Democratic support.

“You can look at the overall visions of the platforms of the Democratic Party and Republican Party and see why younger people tend to vote Democratic,” he said, pointing particularly to the parties’ divergent stances on social issues.

Karol and Rouse both agreed the Democrats have done especially well among young and liberal voters with sympathetic platforms on gay rights and immigration.

On a state level, Rouse said, Republicans’ positions on those issues also have not been — and will not be — helpful to the party’s growth.

“I don’t think that’s going to fly in a state like Maryland,” she said.

Karol said the GOP must be seen as a “credible, responsible, nonthreatening alternative” to the Democrats. In this state, that is clearly a work in progress.

On Election Day, state residents and young voters across the country showed strong liberal leanings. President Obama received 62 percent of the vote in this state, while 18- to 29-year-olds voted for him 60 percent of the time nationally, according to a Pew Research Center report last month.

Given all this, it’s no surprise students at this university voted overwhelmingly for Obama, congressional Democrats and liberal ballot questions.

Compared to his 62 percent state victory, Obama received 80 percent of the vote at Stamp Student Union’s polls, and the victorious same-sex marriage and DREAM Act bills received more support on the campus than off by more than 20 percent.

At times, a vocal liberal majority on the campus has seemed to drown out conservative opposition, particularly during the pushes for marriage equality and the DREAM Act. While supporters of those initiatives rallied on the campus, conservatives were distinctly quieter.

“They made Republicans and people who didn’t support the [DREAM Act] seem like they were not very nice people,” Agazzi said.

Rouse said ideological discrimination could happen on a campus like this one, though it never should.

“It can be easy to, even inadvertently or without [bad] intent, stifle out minority views,” she said.

Agazzi said her party continues to grapple with how to reach the youngest members of the electorate.

“On most college campuses,” she said, “it’s not very cool to be a Republican.”

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