Still waiting for final results to be posed by the Howard County Board of Elections, but there are some additional numbers in that allow a rough comparison of voter participation in the 2006 election compared to past elections.
According to the Baltimore Sun’s article Absentee ballots leave results unchanged there are 2271 provisional and overseas ballots to be counted. The current state 2006 results for Howard County are here.
If all 2271 ballots are valid, there were 105,651 votes cast in the 2006 Election.
Using 2004 as a baseline:
Year Votes % Change
2006 105,651 + 9.5 Gubernatorial – Ehrlich / O’Malley
2004 132,221 + 37.0 Presidential – Bush/Kerry
2002 96,508 - Gubernatorial – Ehrlich / Townsend
In 2004
53,260 votes – Governor Ehrlich.
42,438 votes – Kathleen K Townsend.
In 2006 (without provisional votes) compared to 2002 results
Votes Change % Change
50,888 votes (49.2%) – Governor Ehrlich -2372 -4.5
51,401 votes (49.7%) – Martin O’Malley +8963 +17.4
How did this affect the race for County Executive? Well, according to the Sun, currently Chris Merdon is more than 8000 votes behind.
