Women Dominate Maryland Primaries

Candidates and political consultants have known for a long time that women outvote men in Maryland elections. But data released by the State Board of Elections (SBE) on last month’s primaries show just how important that phenomenon is.

SBE’s 2010 election page does not include a turnout section yet, but its press room does have stats on election day and early voter turnout. One of SBE’s breakdowns lists primary turnout by gender. Here are the raw counts by county.


And here are the percentages of primary voters who were women.


In every county, women were a majority of primary voters. This is primarily due to female dominance of Democratic primaries, in which they accounted for 59% of voters. But women have near parity in the Republican Party too, where they accounted for 49% of voters.

One more fact stands out. Female vote percentages were highest in Maryland’s four largest jurisdictions. They are:

Baltimore City: 60.8%
Prince George’s: 59.3%
Montgomery: 56.0%
Baltimore County: 55.6%

These four jurisdictions accounted for 52% of all primary voters last month. And they accounted for 56% of all votes in the 2006 general election.

Meet the bosses of Free State politics, folks: Maryland women!