The Maryland Senate race is locked in a dead heat between former Gov. Larry Hogan (R-Md.) and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.).
Hogan and Alsobrooks were tied in an AARP Maryland commissioned poll released Tuesday. Both candidates have support from 46 percent of likely voters, according to the poll. Around seven percent of voters are undecided and one percent said they will vote for another candidate.
The poll shows Maryland’s status as a blue state — with 64 percent of polled likely voters siding with Vice President Kamala Harris (D) against 32 percent for former President Donald Trump (R) — might not be enough to ensure a Democratic win in the U.S. Senate race.
The contest is one of the most-watched Senate races in the country and could decide who controls the Senate, which is currently narrowly held by Democrats.
AARP’s poll is the first to show the candidates in a deadlock for the U.S. Senate seat since the primary. Public Policy Polling, a firm affiliated with the Democratic Party, previously reported a lead for Alsobrooks in May and June.
[Wes Moore, Angela Alsobrooks give keynote speeches at Democratic National Convention]
The former governor, AARP’s survey shows, is winning over surveyed independents by 23 percentage points and swing voters by 57 percentage points. Hogan also has support from 26 percent of Democrats.
Alsobrooks is leading among Black voters, but there is a strong age divide. Among Black voters over 50, she is ahead by 52 percentage points, Tuesday’s AARP poll found. For Black voters under 50, her lead falls to 18 percentage points.
Hogan leads among white voters 50 and older by 20 percentage points and among white voters under 50 by eight percentage points, according to the AARP poll.
If elected, Hogan would be the first Republican U.S. Senator from Maryland since 1987.
Hogan, who announced his campaign as a Republican after serving as co-chair of the third-party political group No Labels, is at odds with some members of his own party. The candidate has attempted to distance himself from the GOP throughout his Senate campaign.
“Marylanders are fed up with politics as usual and the broken systems that no longer serve us. This year we have a chance to fix it,” Hogan wrote in a Tuesday statement reacting to the poll.
Trump endorsed Hogan in June against the governor’s wishes. In March, Hogan said he would not vote for Trump or then-candidate President Joe Biden.
But Alsobrooks and the Maryland Democratic Party have emphasized Hogan’s widely-reported recruitment into the race by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his other connections to the mainstream Republican party.
In a Tuesday post on X, formerly Twitter, Alsobrooks emphasized the Democratic Party’s need to control the Senate.
“We have always known that this race was going to be decided on the margins, and this new poll today confirms that,” Alsobrooks wrote. “Now more than ever, I need your help to keep Maryland blue and defend the Senate majority.”
Hogan served as Maryland’s governor from 2015 to 2023. He left the governorship with approval ratings around 77 percent in a 2023 Gonzales Poll while his party flailed under a veto-proof Democratic majority in the state legislature.
Alsobrooks was first elected as Prince George’s County Executive in 2018 after serving as the county’s state’s attorney.
The two candidates are vying for the seat of retiring Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.).
The poll was conducted in bipartisan collaboration between two polling firms — Fabrizio Ward (R) and Impact Research (D) — from Aug. 14 to Aug. 20. The firms oversampled likely voters over 50 and Black likely voters 50 years or older. The poll’s margin of sampling error for Maryland voters was plus or minus 4 percent in a statewide sample, plus or minus 3.5 percent in the total voter sample and plus or minus 4.9 percent the total sample of Black voters.
