What really happened in Maryland

For Democrats, election night 2014 offered a surfeit of unpleasant surprises. Perhaps most surprising of all was the outcome of Maryland’s gubernatorial race (disclosure: our firm was not involved).

After all, Maryland is one of the bluest states in the country — the second most Democratic in Gallup’s party identification data, with Democrats holding 74 percent of state Senate seats, 69 percent of seats in the House of Delegates, 88 percent of U.S. House seats and both seats in the U.S. Senate

The three public polls in October found Democrat Anthony Brown leading Republican Larry Hogan in the governor’s race by 7, 9 and 13 points. So no one expected Hogan to win by nearly 5 points.

What happened?

One may reasonably wonder why I’m reopening that wound now, six months after the election, when the shock has worn off and we are already well on to 2016. My answer is three-fold.

First, because individual-level data is only now becoming available, we can learn much more about these races now than we could before. While we may be bored with them and on to the next campaign, real learning can only occur now.

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