Welcome to the new state government
If there was ever an argument for the Electoral College, Maryland provides it.
There were four statewide races, and here are the (still-unofficial) totals for the races as a whole. For the purposes of this post, I'm excluding minor party and write-in candidates in my percentages.
Governor:
O'Malley/Brown (D) 923,991 - 53.1% Ehrlich/Cox (R) 815,776 - 46.9%
Comptroller:
Peter Franchot (D) 997,524 - 58.9% Anne McCarthy (R) 695,633 - 41.1%
Attorney General:
Douglas Gansler (D) 1,023,801 - 60.9% Scott Rolle (R) 658,083 - 39.1%
U.S. Senator:
Ben Cardin (D) 947,174 - 54.9% Michael Steele (R) 777,614 - 45.1%
Now, let's imagine for a moment that the votes from three jurisdictions were tossed out - Prince George's and Montgomery counties, and Baltimore City. Here are your new revised results.
Governor:
Ehrlich/Cox (R) 631,775 - 57.4% O'Malley/Brown (D) 469,619 - 42.6%
Comptroller:
Anne McCarthy (R) 546,101 - 51.1% Peter Franchot (D) 521,576 - 48.9%
Attorney General:
Scott Rolle (R) 531,271 - 50.2% Douglas Gansler (D) 527,880 - 49.8%
U.S. Senator:
Michael Steele (R) 601,529 - 55.2% Ben Cardin (D) 488,766 - 44.8%
Put another way, as an absolute percentage of votes the Democrats got from those three jurisdictions:
O'Malley 49.2% Franchot 47.7% Gansler 48.4% Cardin 48.4%
And if you thought the 98-43 Democrat edge in the House of Delegates was bad, in the new term it will balloon to a whopping 105-36 bulge. Those three Democrat strongholds either elect or help to elect a total of 66 Delegates, and the tally for those 22 districts - 66 Democrats, 0 Republicans. (There may be 1 Republican to make it 65-1 if Del. Jean Cryor of Montgomery County can make up about 120 votes in the remaining count.) The rest of the state has a 39-36 Democrat edge.
In the State Senate, the Democrats will keep their exact numbers from the last session, it's still 33-14 Democrat. Of course, all 22 of those districts in question have Democrat senators, otherwise the GOP would hold a 14-11 advantage.
What this proves is the value of the Electoral College nationwide. Here in Maryland three geographic locations dictate the affairs of the other 21. It seems to me that what we have now is not the state of Maryland (and certainly not the Free State) but rather the monarchy of Prince Baltigomery.
Looking at things this way, it appears the GOP has an all-but-impossible task in making this even a competitive state. But we have four years to begin educating the outstaters first. It almost has to become an "us vs. them" mentality.
For example, getting the 13 outstate counties (Eastern Shore + Western Maryland) to a consistent 70% GOP vote would make a serious dent in the Prince Baltigomery advantage - if that area can be 70% Democrat we can certainly make "our" area 70% GOP. Then it would come down to getting the metropolitan exurbs to enough of a split, which is doable. Had this 70-30 split happened for the outstate counties (maintaining the votes in the Prince Baltigomery area and adding the GOP votes as above) based on the vote totals for O'Malley plus Ehrlich, these would have been the results.
Outstate: GOP 201,071; Dems 86,173 (70-30 vote split). Prince Baltigomery: Dems 454,372; GOP 184,001 (actual votes, 71.2% Democrat)
This leaves a deficit of 155,473 votes. However, there were 814,150 votes cast in what I call the exurb area around Baltimore and in Southern Maryland. That area needs to split 60/40 GOP - if it does, then these are their results.
Exurbs: GOP 488,490; Dems 325,660 (GOP 60-40 split).
Total: GOP 873,562; Dems 866,205.
That may seem hard to fathom, but there's not a lot of improvement needed in those exurb counties. These are the actual 2006 Ehrlich percentages for those localities:
Carroll 69.9% Harford 63.4% St. Mary's 58.2% Calvert 57.2% Anne Arundel 56.9% Baltimore County 50.9% Howard 49.2% Charles 47.7%
As it was, the total worked out to almost a dead even 55%. In most instances, the 2006 Ehrlich vote ran 5-10% behind his 2002 totals so 60% GOP voting is a very attainable goal for 2010. In turn, this may begin to crack that stranglehold that the Democrats have on the General Assembly, at least enough to give any future Republican governor an override-proof minority.
But for the next four years, we belong to the fiefdom of Prince Baltigomery. Now is the time to start planning the overthrow at the ballot box.
I think the first step as a party is to decide what solutions we have to the key issues that face our state. To help, I'm going to do a post in the next few days with some ideas on how to do just that.