Maryland voters continue to express deep economic concerns about the price of consumer goods while at the same time having more positive than negative views about the state’s direction and of Gov. Wes Moore, a new poll from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County found.

The statewide poll — conducted just over a month before Election Day — also found more Maryland voters have a favorable view of the Democratic Party than the Republican Party. Though a vast majority of each party’s voters dislike the other, independents are also displaying more negative attitudes toward the Republican Party, the poll found.

That reality of party partisanship is reflected in races like the U.S. Senate matchup this fall between Republican Larry Hogan and Democrat Angela Alsobrooks, said Mileah Kromer, who runs the poll as director of the UMBC Institute of Politics.

Hogan, a popular former two-term governor, has been trying to elicit support from Democrats by claiming he won’t be entirely loyal to either party if he’s elected. Alsobrooks, a two-term Prince George’s County executive, has meanwhile repeatedly tried to tie Hogan to national Republicans and their policy priorities, which “speaks directly to how the Maryland Democrats view the Republican Party,” Kromer said.

“When you look at these numbers you can’t help but immediately say what a polarized country and state we live in,” said Kromer, who will release the results of polling in the Senate race on Wednesday.

Just over half of all voters said they have a favorable view of the Democratic Party, and 41% said they had an unfavorable view. The results were essentially flipped for opinions of the Republican Party, with 37% favorable and 54% unfavorable.

Those opinions may not be surprising in a state where 53% of registered voters are Democrats, 24% are Republican and 22% are unaffiliated.

But the poll also found that independents have a less negative view of Democrats (46% unfavorable) compared to their view of Republicans (54% unfavorable).

“That’s reflective of the larger national political environment, which seeps into Maryland politics,” Kromer said.

The poll of 1,003 Maryland adults was conducted Sept. 23-28 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. Of the 917 respondents who said they were registered voters, the margin of error was plus or minus 3.2 percentage points. It was the first UMBC poll under the direction of Kromer, a longtime pollster previously with Goucher College.

As voters consistently rank the economy as a top-of-mind issue this year, the poll found two-thirds of Marylanders consider the economic conditions in the state as “poor” or “fair.”

Presented with a list of economic indicators, the price of food and consumer goods rose to the top. Nine in 10 voters said they were “very” or “somewhat” concerned with prices. Eight in 10 said the same about housing cost and availability, and three-quarters said the same about both the job market and the price of gas or energy.

That dim mood comes despite the rate of inflation ticking down from its modern-day record — from a 9.1% year-over-year increase in June 2022 to 2.5% in August — but prices are still higher than they were before the spike, and consumers are still feeling it.

“Voters care about the economy in front of them and the economy in front of every single one of us is the price of consumer goods,” Kromer said.

That concern has also shown up as Hogan and Alsobrooks try to connect with voters.

For Hogan, it’s manifested in messages that rail against both nationwide inflation and state-level costs. In Alsobrooks’ case, a new and highly coveted campaign ad with Barack Obama featured the former president saying Alsobrooks would “work to lower costs.”

Marylanders don’t appear to be blaming Moore, the Democratic governor, for what they see as a poor economic performance, Kromer said.

Moore’s performance as governor is approved by 54% of Maryland adults while 32% disapprove. While eight in 10 Democrats approve of Moore, 17% of Republicans said the same, while 69% of Republicans said they disapproved. Among independent voters, 47% approve and 41% disapprove of Moore’s performance.

Those results were slightly below other recent polls that showed Moore’s approval rating at or above 60% — including a September poll from The Washington Post and the University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, and an August survey from the Annapolis-based Gonzales Research & Media Services.

Asked if the state is heading in the right direction, 46% said it’s on the right track, and 39% said it’s on the wrong track.

Moore and the Democratic-led General Assembly are gearing up for another challenging budget year in Annapolis, where some believe they will need to consider raising or shifting taxes in order to fill budget deficits and avoid cuts to government services.

The UMBC poll, wading into the issue, found a plurality of 40% would like to keep government services and taxes roughly as they are now. Another 36% said they would like fewer government services if it meant reducing state taxes, and just 15% said they would rather have more state government services even if it meant higher taxes.

“Raising taxes is typically not a very popular move and our poll suggests that it would not be,” Kromer said.

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