Six in Ten Maryland Voters Want Open Primaries. A Bill That Passed the House Died in a Senate Committee Without a Vote.

Six in ten Maryland likely voters want the state to scrap its closed primary system, according to the second installment of the new UMBC Poll. Sixty percent say Maryland should switch to an open primary that lets any registered voter, including the unaffiliated, cast a ballot in either party’s primary. Thirty-two percent want to keep the current system.

Support crosses nearly every line the pollsters drew. Registered Republicans are the only group that does not back the change, and they split almost evenly.

Who Wants Open Primaries

Among likely voters statewide, by party registration:

• Unaffiliated voters: 74 percent want open primaries, 14 percent want to keep the closed system
• Democrats: 63 percent open, 30 percent closed
• Republicans: 44 percent open, 48 percent closed

Republicans are the only registration group where keeping the closed system leads, and the four-point gap is inside the poll’s margin of error. Everywhere else the margins are lopsided.

The Age Gap Is the Widest Split in the Poll

Support for open primaries falls steadily as voters get older. Among likely voters 18 to 34, 71 percent want to open the primaries and 21 percent want to keep them closed. Among voters 35 to 54, it is 63 percent to 30 percent. Among voters 55 and older, support drops to 52 percent against 41 percent who want the closed system.

Younger Maryland voters back open primaries by better than three to one. Voters over 55 are nearly split.

Women, Progressives and Moderates Drive the Majority

• Women: 65 percent want open primaries. Men: 55 percent.
• Progressives: 67 percent open. Moderates: 63 percent open.
• Conservatives: 41 percent open, 52 percent closed, the only ideological group opposed.

One split does not appear at all. Maryland voters with a bachelor’s degree and voters without one answer this question almost identically, at 60 percent and 60 percent. Education predicts nearly nothing here, which is unusual in a poll where most other questions divide along familiar lines.

More Than a Million Marylanders Are Shut Out

Maryland runs closed primaries, so a voter who is not registered with a party generally cannot vote in one. As of September, Maryland had 1,010,090 unaffiliated active registered voters out of 4,333,854 statewide, or about 23 percent of the electorate, according to the Maryland State Board of Elections.

Unaffiliated voters can still vote in nonpartisan primaries and in every general election. The Montgomery County Board of Elections puts it this way: a voter registered as unaffiliated “will only be able to vote in any nonpartisan primary election held in your jurisdiction, such as a primary election to select nominees for the board of education.”

The Legislature Had Two Chances This Year

Maryland lawmakers took up the question in the 2026 session and passed nothing.

House Bill 496, titled Election Law – Unaffiliated Voters – Open Primary Elections, would have done what the poll asked about: let unaffiliated voters choose either party’s ballot. The bill was sponsored by Delegate Lily Qi, a Democrat representing District 15 in Montgomery County, and Delegate Schmidt. The bill got a first reading on January 27 and a hearing on February 11. The record shows nothing after that. House Bill 496 died in the House Government, Labor, and Elections Committee without a vote.

Qi has carried a version of this proposal in four consecutive sessions. She was the primary sponsor of House Bill 114 in 2023, House Bill 257 in 2024, House Bill 1280 in 2025 and House Bill 496 this year. Each one got a hearing. None of them ever reached a vote on the House floor.

House Bill 156 was the narrower version. Rather than opening the primaries, it would have let unaffiliated voters affiliate with a party in person at an early voting center or at the polls on primary day and vote a provisional ballot. House Bill 156 passed the House 110 to 26 on March 11.

The Senate referred it to the Education, Energy, and the Environment Committee on March 12. The committee never voted on it. Its cross-filed companion, Senate Bill 132, had been sent to the same committee in January and met the same end.

Two Montgomery County Senators Lead That Committee

The Senate Education, Energy, and the Environment Committee is chaired by Senator Brian Feldman, a Democrat representing District 15 in Montgomery County. Its vice chair is Senator Cheryl Kagan, a Democrat representing District 17 in Montgomery County.

Kagan sponsored Senate Bill 132 with Senator Jim Rosapepe. Kagan’s own bill died in the committee she serves as vice chair of. Neither the committee record nor the bill file states a reason for the inaction, and no vote was taken that would show where members stood.

Senate Bill 132 was not a first attempt. The bill file notes it was introduced in a prior session as Senate Bill 99 in 2024.

What Happens Next

The Maryland General Assembly convenes its 2027 session in January, and lawmakers begin pre-filing bills in the fall. Any change to how Maryland runs its primaries has to come from Annapolis; counties cannot set their own primary rules.

Whether Feldman, Kagan or anyone else carries an open primary bill in 2027 is the thing to watch. Pre-filed bills become public in the fall, and the committee that stopped both 2026 attempts is the one any new bill has to clear.

About the Poll

The UMBC Poll surveyed 776 Maryland likely voters from September 22 to September 27. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, which UMBC says is larger for subgroups and is not adjusted for design effects. The poll was conducted by the UMBC Institute of Politics under director Mileah Kromer.

The statewide figures and the party breakdowns above come from the poll’s published toplines and are weighted. The breakdowns by age, gender, ideology and education come from the crosstabs UMBC publishes alongside the release and are unweighted, so they carry wider error margins than the headline numbers.

Wednesday’s release is Part 2 of three. Part 1, covering the governor’s race, is covered here. Part 3 is scheduled for Thursday, October 8 at 12:01 a.m.

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