59% say Maryland is on the wrong track. The data shows why.

Three nonpartisan studies released in the last 75 days all confirm the same thing. UMBC, LendingTree, and WalletHub explain what 9A families have been…

If you have knocked on as many doors as I have in the last month, you start to notice patterns. It is not just one voter telling you the same thing. It is every third person on the same block. It is the conversation in the driveway in Marriottsville that sounds like the conversation in the cul de sac in Damascus. Different neighborhoods. Different ages. Across party lines. The same frustration keeps coming up. Three independent studies have been released in the last 75 days. All three are from nonpartisan sources. All three point in the same direction. What families have been telling me at their doors is not a feeling. It is a measurement. 59% say Maryland is heading the wrong way The UMBC Institute of Politics released its statewide poll on April 1, 2026. The headline finding: 59% of Marylanders now say the state is on the wrong track. Only 30% say it is heading in the right direction. The gap matters less than the trajectory. In October 2025, just six months earlier, the same question split 48% wrong track to 40% right track. In half a year, the wrong track number jumped 11 points. The same poll asked Marylanders to rate the state's economic conditions. 76% said poor or fair. Only 22% said good or excellent. The previous October that number was 69%. The trend is sharply down, across every demographic UMBC measured. Mileah Kromer, the poll's director, put it bluntly: "Overwhelmingly, Marylanders are saying the cost of living across all these indicators is higher than it was last year. They don't think things are going well. They're mad." 3rd most expensive state to raise a child LendingTree released its 2026 cost of raising a child analysis on April 23. The 18 year cost in Maryland: $326,360 per child. Third highest in the country, behind only Hawaii and Alaska. For…