Biden easily carried Maryland with 65.4% of the vote to Trump's 32.2% (a margin of 33.2%, much improved from Hillary Clinton's 26.4% in 2016). Prior to the election, all news organizations handicapping the election considered Maryland a state that Biden would carry comfortably. Maryland has long been a Democratic-leaning state, and no Republican presidential candidate has won it since George H. W. Bush in 1988. Biden carried Black-majority Prince George's County and Baltimore City with almost 90% of the vote, and the suburban counties of Montgomery, Howard, and Baltimore with over 60% each. While Republicans typically win more counties by running up margins in more rural western Maryland and the Eastern Shore, the Baltimore-Washington area casts over three-fourths of the state's vote, making it difficult for a Republican to carry Maryland. While Trump won 14 of Maryland's 24 county-level jurisdictions, Biden won the six largest, all of which are part of the Baltimore-Washington area–Montgomery, Prince George's, Anne Arundel, Howard and Baltimore counties and Baltimore City–by over a million votes collectively, more than enough to carry the state.
Per exit polls by the Associated Press, Biden's principal strength in Maryland came from winning 94% of African-Americans, who represented 28% of the electorate. 74% of voters believed the criminal justice system needed a complete overhaul or major changes, and they opted for Biden by 73%. Biden won all other major demographic groups, including 52% of Whites (the first time since 1964 that a Democratic candidate won the white vote in Maryland), 69% of Latinos, 79% of Jews, 54% of Protestants, and 51% of Catholics.[4]
Biden flipped Frederick County in the Washington, D.C., exurbs and Talbot County on the Eastern Shore Democratic for the first time since 1964.[5] He also flipped Kent County on the Eastern Shore, home of Washington College, Democratic for the first time since 2008. In another college county on the Eastern Shore, Wicomico (home of Salisbury University), Trump won but was held below 50% of the vote for the first time for a Republican nominee since 1996.
Primary elections
The primary elections were originally scheduled for April 28, 2020. On March 17, they were moved to June 2 due to concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic.[6]
Biden's performance was the strongest in Maryland for any candidate since Horatio Seymour's 67.2% in 1868. In terms of statewide vote share, Trump performed worse than any Republican since 1912, when the national Republican vote was split by former President Theodore Roosevelt's third-party run; even landslide losers Herbert Hoover in 1932, Alf Landon in 1936, and Barry Goldwater in 1964 managed higher vote shares than Trump's 32.15%. Apart from 1912, only in the antebellum elections of 1856 and 1860–when the Republican Party was not yet established in the slaveholding Old Line State–did the Republican nominee perform worse than Trump did in 2020. In this election, Maryland voted 28.75% to the left of the nation at-large.[28]
With the exception of racially polarized Somerset County, every county in the state swung to Biden from Hillary Clinton's performance in 2016; many swung Democratic by double digits.[29] The Republican presidential vote share has now declined for four elections in a row in Maryland, the longest such current run for the party in any state. It was also one of five states in the nation in which Biden's victory margin was larger than one million raw votes: the others being California, New York, Massachusetts and Illinois.
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Government
