So anyway a lot has been said recently about Steele getting high-profile black support. In this post what I am going to do is a vote simulation. That is, as the closest election to this one will probably be Glendening's defeat of Sauerbrey in 1998, what I am going to do first is list every county and how the votes came in. So see that beneath the fold.
Legend: G=Glendening S=Sauerbrey. This is the 1998 Gubernatorial election, where he won 55-45%.
G S
Allegany 11,333 10,593 0
Anne Arundel 66,428 87,216 362
Baltimore City 125,686 30,140 42
Baltimore 118,832 122,140 51
Calvert 9,723 12,689 5
Caroline 2,270 4,658 1
Carroll 14,938 32,637 15
Cecil 8,360 12,181 21
Charles 14,293 17,824 17
Dorchester 4,324 5,055 1
Frederick 21,597 32,116 3
Garrett 3,026 5,311 0
Harford 28,428 44,300 53
Howard 44,378 38,855 22
Kent 2,937 3,913 3
Montgomery 171,800 103,995 5
Prince George`s 146,746 51,371 18
Queen Anne`s 4,883 8,325 16
St. Mary`s 9,929 11,880 5
Somerset 2,446 3,829 1
Talbot 4,404 7,444 0
Washington 13,756 20,856 1
Wicomico 9,475 12,336 2
Worcester 6,980 8,693 5
Total 846,972 688,357 649
Percent (Rounded) 55% 45% 0
The PG County totals are above. This is a heavily black county, where Steele has gotten the most crossover support. A total of 198,135 votes were cast in PG County. The county went approximately 74%-26% for Glendening.
So what I am going to do is change the balance. Now I assume that Steele gets 40% in PG County. That would instead leave the Steele with 79234 votes, an increase of roughly 28,000 votes. That would leave Cardin win 118881 votes.
So now here is the impact in that scenario:
846,972-28,000=818,972
688,357+28,000=716,357
Assuming that the numbers statewide remain the same in Montgomery County, Baltimore City, and the Baltimore suburbs, even with 40% in PG County, Steele can't win based on this model. Cardin would still win. Thus, even in 1998, if Sauerbrey had polled 40% in PG County, Glendening would still have won by more than 100,000 votes.
Now let me tweak this further. This assumes a very worst case scenario. I will give Steele 40,000 more votes in Baltimore City. This assumes that West Baltimore comes en masse for Steele as if he's going out of style.
818,972-40,000=778,972
716,357+40,000=756,357
So, even if Steele runs the best of any recent Republican in Baltimore City, he still comes up 22,000 votes short. Thus, if Steele is relying on significant black defections, he is not going to win.
Steele needs to not only poll those numbers in PG County and Baltimore City, but he also needs to have Cardin poll as dismally as KKT did in the Baltimore suburbs. Thus, in order to win, Steele has to make a significant royal flush.
He first needs to:
1) Run better than any recent Republican has in Baltimore City and PG County
2) Win the Baltimore suburbs by the margins that Ehrlich dominated KKT by in 2002.
3) Have Cardin run a KKT-style campaign, which, although it is not what I thought it would be, still hasn't reached that level of incompetence.
As MOM is faring better than KKT did in the Baltimore suburbs, coupled with the fact that the Democratic Party is faring better than KKT did in 2002, I don't think that the numbers are there for Steele to win.