About 62 percent of registered voters in Maryland say they approve of the way Gov. Larry Hogan is doing his job, a decline from Hogan’s 70-percent approval rating last September, according to Goucher poll data released Monday.
Despite the high approval rating, only 51 percent of registered voters say they would actually vote for Hogan, a Republican, if the election were held today, the data show.
That’s not terribly surprising, according to Mileah Kromer, director of Goucher College’s Sarah T. Hughes Politics Center, which produces the poll.
“We are starting to actually get into the thick of 2018, that election cycle,” she said. “So it’s really no wonder in a Democratic state that as we start to near that Democratic primary, we will start to see a narrowing of Hogan’s numbers.”
Still, the election is more than a year away, and there are seven candidates vying to be the Democratic Party’s gubernatorial nominee. A lot could change before November 2018.
The poll also found that a majority of Marylanders have a “mostly positive” view of the state’s economy, and 55 percent say the state is headed in the right direction, a decrease from the 65 percent who agreed with that statement at this time last year.