Maryland · Governor

Who is running?

Wes Moore (Democratic), Dan Cox (Republican), Andy Ellis (Green), Cathy White (no party recorded). The margin below is Wes Moore minus the other candidate in the main contest; the rest are on the ballot and not in it.

The race, in brief

Maryland elects its governor on November 3, 2026. The text calls Maryland a solid blue state, carried by Kamala Harris by 29 points in 2024, with Democrats holding all statewide offices. The state profile records a Black share of 0.3, a college share of 0.4 and a federal worker share of 0.1.

Incumbent Democrat Wes Moore, governor since 2023, seeks a second term with Lieutenant Governor Aruna Miller after facing token primary opposition. His Republican opponent is Dan Cox, a former state delegate and the 2022 nominee, making this the first gubernatorial rematch in Maryland since 2010. Cox won the June 23 primary over Ed Hale after the Maryland Democratic Party and Moore aired ads promoting Cox over Hale. Former governor Larry Hogan declined to run. Andy Ellis (Green) and Cathy White (Working Class Party) are also standing. As of August 18, 2026 Moore had raised $15,531,913 with $6,519,106 on hand; Cox $241,715 with $136,092 on hand.

Every rater listed calls the race D, with dates from September 4, 2025 to September 23, 2026. The one general-election poll, Zenith Research (July 27 − August 3, 2026), had Moore 58%, Cox 31%. The text describes Moore's approval as positive but steadily declining.

A paragraph quoting a model forecast from the day this brief was written is omitted; the current forecast is at the top of this page.

The facts, each beside its sentence

Not in the source: Both primary results tables omit candidate names, so individual vote shares (including Cox's and Moore's) cannot be attributed.; No 2022 general-election result is given, though the race is a rematch.; facts.candidates marks Moore as incumbent: false, but the text names him the incumbent.; The forecast rows carry no basis field, so the text cannot say whether the model uses the statewide poll listed here.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as fadc3b0a671d; written by claude-fable-5-1 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.

How it has voted for president

A shift of 1.5 points toward the Democrats from 2016 to 2024. county returns summed; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.

The state in numbers

ACS 5-year state tables; BLS county unemployment and BEA county income, transfers and jobs summed to the state. Every figure is a named column of a named public-domain table, archived before it was read.

Who is ahead, and by how much?

Two numbers because they answer two questions. The nowcast is where opinion stands; the election-day forecast is where it is likely to end up.

How likely is each to win?

Monte Carlo error is ±0.0 points. A change smaller than that is simulation noise rather than news, and this page will not describe it as movement.

How wide is the range?

Nowcast: 90% of simulations fall between +10.5 and +45.8 points. Election day: +10.5 to +48.2. The election-day interval is 2.4 points wider, which is the 33 days of movement still to come.

What is the uncertainty made of?

Total sd 11.53 points, made of latent opinion 65%, race-specific polling error 19%, drift to election day 12%, correlated polling error 4%. The decomposition is stored with the forecast rather than reconstructed, so a probability whose dominant input is a placeholder is visibly that.

What evidence is this built on?

1 polls, most recent 2026-08-03. every input is provisional.

What changed since the last run?

Shaded band is the 90% interval, line is the central estimate, positive is Wes Moore ahead of Andy Ellis. Over 13 stored forecasts the central estimate moved +2.0 points. There were 6 specification changes (marked on the axis) and no new polls arrived over this window — so every movement in this chart is a change to the model, not a change in the race.

Since 2026-10-01: margin +0.00 points, win probability +0.0 points, on +0 polls. Of that, +0.00 points came from +0 poll(s), -0.75 from the shorter horizon, and +0.75 from the model specification.

How has this model done before?

Measured on 230 forecasts across 230 races in cycles 2016,2018,2020,2022,2024: mean absolute error 4.56 points, Brier score 0.0543. The nominal 90% interval contained the result 94% of the time, the 80% interval 84%, and the 50% interval 47%. Read that with care: a national polling miss moves every race in a cycle at once, so the sample size for a question about the intervals is 5 cycle(s), not 230 forecasts. Per cycle -- bias +1.644 pts; 2016: n=43 bias=+4.68 cov90=0.860; 2018: n=63 bias=-0.52 cov90=1.000; 2020: n=35 bias=+5.44 cov90=0.886; 2022: n=54 bias=-0.60 cov90=0.944; 2024: n=35 bias=+1.48 cov90=1.000.

Where did every number come from?

Nowcast run a123b4b3-ba9f-4ff9-af13-8995bad847d0 and election-day run fecff72e-2679-47ee-8234-27c0ee5b0bf5, model single_race_latent/0.8.1 at commit bdf7e83107c17a2399efe61a44ef1bbee48f9284, seeds 20260924 and 20260924.