Only about 39 percent of registered Montgomery County voters cast ballots in Tuesday’s election, the lowest number in at least the last four gubernatorial general races and what one veteran county lawmaker deemed as “terrible turnout.”
Terrible turnout! Montgomery County's 39% is lowest in this century for a general election, all registered voters. 50,000 fewer than 2002.
— Nancy Floreen (@NancyFloreen) November 5, 2014
Of 634,659 registered county voters, only 246,987 voted — a not-so-shocking result that played a part in Republican Larry Hogan’s shocking upset win over lieutenant governor and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Anthony Brown.
With 1,981 of 1,986 statewide precincts reporting on Wednesday morning, Hogan had a roughly 77,000 vote advantage on Brown, good for a 4.5-point lead. Two other big Democratic jurisdictions — Prince George’s County and Baltimore City — had voter turnout rates of 38.03 percent and 35.57 percent, respectively.
Brown conceded to Hogan just after midnight, after it became clear that any late-arriving results from those traditionally Democratic areas weren’t going to put him over the top.
In 2010, incumbent Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley beat Republican challenger Bob Ehrlich by 15 points and got 68 percent of the vote in Montgomery County. Ehrlich pulled in 30 percent of the Montgomery County vote. County turnout in that election was 51 percent, with 294,604 out of 573,431 registered voters casting ballots.
In the 2002 election Councilmember Nancy Floreen referred to, Ehrlich beat then-Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend with roughly the same breakdown of Montgomery County voters as last night despite a county turnout of 61 percent.
Floreen was one of the four incumbent at-large councilmembers who cruised to reelection. The difference from fourth-place vote-getter Hans Riemer and the closest opponent, Republican Shelly Skolnick, was almost 56,000 votes. Skolnick got 76,010 votes total.
County Executive Isiah Leggett also handily beat his Republican opponent, Jim Shalleck, by an almost 2-to-1 vote margin and by almost the same margin he won his 2010 reelection bid.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen won his reelection bid with 60 percent of the Eighth Congressional District. Republican challenger Dave Wallace got about 39 percent, meaning a Van Hollen advantage of about 44,000 votes. Much of Van Hollen’s margin of victory came from Montgomery County precincts, where he outpolled Wallace by more than 68,000 votes.
Rep. John Delaney, Van Hollen’s Montgomery County colleague in the House of Representatives, faced a much stiffer challenge. He’s leading Republican challenger Dan Bongino by a little more than 2,000 votes, according to the state Board of Elections page.
Delaney’s margin in Montgomery County was also slimmer than Van Hollen’s. He won 61 percent of the Sixth Congressional District vote in the county, compared to Bongino’s 36 percent, a raw vote advantage of about 21,000.
Incumbent Democratic councilmembers had no trouble in the Council districts. District 1 Councilmember Roger Berliner won his third term with 68.3 percent of the vote. Newcomers Sidney Katz (District 3 — Gaithersburg, Rockville) and Tom Hucker (District 5 — Silver Spring) ran unopposed.
Despite some controversy and more attention than usual, all four county Circuit Court judges were reelected.
The three incumbent Board of Education members all won handily and Jill Ortman-Fouse beat Shebra Evans by a little more than 5,000 votes for the Board’s open at-large seat.
The domino effect in District 16 went as planned by Democrats. State Sen. Brian Frosh won his bid for Maryland attorney general by 15 points and more than 230,000 votes.
Del. Susan Lee more than doubled up on Republican opponent Meyer Marks to win Frosh’s vacant State Senate seat. First-time winner Marc Korman got 9,000 more votes than closest Republican opponent Rose Li to take Lee’s vacant House of Delegates seat.
Korman will join District 16 incumbents Bill Frick and Ariana Kelly in Annapolis for the next term. All three got at least 22,781 votes. Li, one of the few Montgomery County Republicans to mount a viable campaign, finished with 14,253 votes.
The low turnout wasn’t much of a surprise to local Democrats. Just 24 percent of county Democrats voted in June’s primary.
Some local candidates spent the last few weeks of the campaign attempting to drum up as much support as possible for Brown and Delaney — knowing turnout in heavily blue Montgomery County would be vital to their chances.
As he voted early in Chevy Chase last week, Frosh said his main focus was on Brown’s race against Hogan, who in some polls had clawed within single digits of the man who started the race as a heavy favorite.
