A joint poll by the University of Maryland and The Washington Post puts former NAACP president Ben Jealous in the lead for the Democratic nomination to unseat Republican Gov. Larry Hogan.
But most voters remain undecided, and in potential match-ups, Hogan holds at least a 10-point lead over each of his challengers.
Jealous received 21 percent support from the 532 likely Democratic voters surveyed between May 29 and June 3, followed by Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker, who got 16 percent.
All other nominees were in single digits. Former Montgomery County Councilwoman Valerie Ervin, the most recent entrant in the race following the sudden death of her running mate, Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, came in third place at 8 percent. Montgomery County State Sen. Richard Madaleno Jr. received 6 percent, Baltimore lawyer Jim Shea and former policy director for Michelle Obama Krish Vignarajah both received 4 percent and entrepreneur Alec Ross got 2 percent.
Thirty-nine percent of respondents remain undecided.
Among the Democrats, nearly two-thirds say they support the job Hogan is doing in Annapolis, the poll found, slightly below his overall job approval rating of 71 percent.
“It looks like a pretty tight contest,” Michael J. Hanmer, associate professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland’s Center for American Politics and Citizenship, which conducted the poll, told The Post. “It’s going to come down to which candidates can get their supporters to show up and vote.”
Most polls leading up this point have put Baker ahead of Jealous. On Twitter, Jealous touted the poll as a positive sign of his campaign’s organizing efforts.
New poll shows our campaign ahead by FIVE POINTS.
What does that change? Nothing.
We are organizers.
We are working families.
And we will remain underdogs until the day we win!
So please keep organizing, keep calling, keep knocking!#WeGotNexthttps://t.co/1cojHaDrEK
— Ben Jealous (@BenJealous) June 5, 2018
The strongholds for Jealous and Baker are fairly clean-cut. Baker, unsurprisingly, is drawing support from his home county as well as neighboring Montgomery County, both of which are suburbs of Washington, D.C. Jealous, meanwhile, is drawing most of his support from Baltimore City and Baltimore County.
In an odd twist, it is Madaleno who fares best in a head-to-head match-up with Hogan, trailing 40 percent to 50 percent. Jealous and Baker are both behind him with margins of 11 points.
Overall, pollsters talked with a random sample of 1,015 Maryland adults.
