Sun Poll: Maryland Democrats Prefer Hillary Over O'Malley

While Maryland Democrats overwhelmingly approve of the job Gov. Martin O’Malley has done in statewide office, they aren’t yet ready to back him as their party’s presidential nominee.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leads O'Malley by nearly 10 to 1 among likely Maryland Democratic voters in a Baltimore Sun poll for top candidates in the 2016 presidential election.

When asked for a favorite among Clinton, O'Malley, Vice President Joe Biden and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, 59 percent picked Clinton. Biden came in second, with 14 percent, the Sun says, while O'Malley received 6 percent support. Cuomo was last at 4 percent of those polled.

O’Malley, who is in his final term as governor, is preparing for a possible presidential bid, he recently told The Washington Post. The governor has been meeting with foreign- and domestic-policy experts privately to prepare, and told the newspaper that he would make a good president “for these times especially.”

Sources told the newspaper that O’Malley wants to run for the White House in 2016, but probably won’t if Clinton runs. He was the second governor in the country to support Clinton’s 2008 run for the presidential nomination.

Dr. Benjamin Carson, a respected and now retired Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon, topped the list of contenders for Maryland Republicans. The other GOP prospective candidates listed in the poll were former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

The preference by the state’s Democrats for other presidential candidates "is not a good sign for him," Steve Raabe, president of OpinionWorks, told the Sun. "For these second tier candidates, it's advocates from their own state who go to Iowa and New Hampshire" to sell them to voters, Raabe said. O'Malley "definitely has some work to do here at home."