2008 United States presidential election in Maryland candidate Barack Obama
Analysis
Maryland has supported the Democratic nominee in each of the last five presidential elections by an average margin of 15.4%. In 1980, it was 1 of only 6 states to vote for Democrat Jimmy Carter over Republican Ronald Reagan.  It has only supported a Republican six times since Franklin D. Roosevelt – 1948 and the Republican landslides of 1952, 1956, 1972, 1984 and 1988.
Maryland is often among the Democratic nominees' best states. In 1992, Bill Clinton fared better in Maryland than any other state except his home state of Arkansas. In 1996, Maryland was Clinton's sixth best, in 2000 Maryland ranked fourth for Al Gore and in 2004 John Kerry showed his fifth best performance in Maryland.
Republican presidential candidates typically win more counties by running up huge margins in western Maryland and the Eastern Shore. However, they are usually swamped by the heavily Democratic Baltimore-Washington, D.C. axis, which casts almost 75% of the state's vote.  The state's four largest county-level jurisdictions – Montgomery, Prince George's and Baltimore counties and the City of Baltimore — are strongly Democratic. These areas, which contain 1.5 million voters combined, make it extremely difficult for a Republican to win Maryland. Even in bad years for Democrats, a Republican usually has to run the table in the rest of the state and win either Montgomery, Prince George's or Baltimore counties to have a realistic chance of carrying the state. In 1984, for instance, Ronald Reagan only carried Maryland by crushing Walter Mondale in Baltimore County and narrowly winning Montgomery. In 1988, George H. W. Bush ran up a 42,300-vote margin in Baltimore County over Michael Dukakis – almost 85% of his statewide margin of 49,800 votes.
The 2008 election was no exception. Barack Obama won the state's 10 electoral votes in 2008 with 61.92% of the vote to John McCain's 36.47%.  Obama carried Montgomery, Prince George's, Baltimore County and Baltimore City with 71.6%, 88.9%, 56.2 and 87.2% of the vote, respectively. Obama's combined 550,000-vote margin in these four areas would have been enough to carry the state.  While McCain won more counties, the only large county he won was Anne Arundel County, home to the state capital, Annapolis. In this election, Maryland voted 18.17% to the left of the nation at-large.Both of Maryland's U.S. Senators and 7 of its 8 U.S. Representatives in Congress are Democrats, and Democrats hold supermajorities in the state Senate and House of Delegates. The state has elected only 5 Republican governors since 1900.
U.S. Representative Steny Hoyer, a Democrat who represents Maryland's 5th Congressional District, was elected as House Majority Leader for the 110th Congress of the U.S. House of Representatives and 111th Congress, serving in that post since January 2007.
While Maryland is a Democratic Party stronghold, its best known political figure is perhaps a Republican – former governor Spiro Agnew, who served as vice president under Richard Nixon. He was vice president from 1969 to 1973, when he resigned in the aftermath of revelations that he had taken bribes while he was Governor of Maryland. In late 1973, a court found Agnew guilty of violating tax laws.
In 2008, Democrats picked up a U.S. House an open seat in Maryland's 1st Congressional District as Democrat Frank M. Kratovil, Jr. defeated Republican Andy Harris by less than a 1% margin of victory.
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