Maryland's electoral votes in U.S. presidential elections 1789-2020

Maryland has cast electoral ballots in every U.S. presidential election, and has correctly given the majority of its electoral votes to the overall winner in 39 out of 59 elections, resulting in a success rate of 66 percent. Apart from the first two U.S. elections, where George Washington was elected unanimously, Maryland has voted for a major party candidate in all but one elections; this was in 1856, where Maryland was the only state carried by the Know Nothing Party's Millard Fillmore. In early elections, Maryland's electors cast separate ballots for the most popular candidate in their district, although this system fell out of use in the 1830s. Since the 1850s, Maryland has generally voted for the Democratic nominee, siding with the Democrats in 29 elections, and the Republicans twelve times. In the 2020 election, Maryland was a comfortable victory for Democratic nominee Joe Biden, whose share of the popular vote was over double that of his rival, Donald Trump.

Closest ever elections

In terms of popular votes, Maryland has seen the two closest results in any presidential election. The first of these was in 1832, where Henry Clay received 19,160 popular votes, while Andrew Jackson received 19,156; a difference of just four votes. The second was in 1904, where Theodore Roosevelt received 109,497 votes, 51 votes more than his rival, Alton B. Parker. In contrast to the 1832 election, the most popular candidate did not win Maryland in 1904, as Democratic politicians and electors were able to manipulate the voting system to change the winner of their district; this system was in place until 1937. While these elections in Maryland have two of the smallest differences in the number of popular votes cast, the smallest difference in the share of votes occurred in the 2000 election in Florida, where George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by just 537 votes, which equated to a 0.009 percent difference.

Marylanders

No U.S. president was ever born in or resided in Maryland when taking office, nor has any major party candidate come from the Old Line State. Throughout most of its history, Maryland was allocated eight electoral votes, although it was raised to ten in the second half of the twentieth century, due to a high growth rate in the decades after the Second World War.