Troubling poll news continues for Gov. Wes Moore (D) in a new survey that shows approval numbers for the first-term executive continue to slip and the gap between those who approve and disapprove of his performance continues to shrink.
The Maryland Now poll is the most recent of several over the last nine months that have shown a continued softening of support for the charismatic first-term governor.
Five in 10 surveyed in the latest poll said they approved of the job done by Moore. But the gap between those who approve and disapprove of the governor’s performance narrowed to 8 percentage points — a drop of 13 percentage points in six months.
The poll — conducted by Blended Public Affairs and powerhouse Annapolis lobbying firm Perry Jacobson — surveyed 1,256 Maryland residents by text message between July 24 and July 30. The poll has a margin of error of 2.7 percentage points.
The poll said 21% of those surveyed said Moore was doing an excellent job, down from 27% in February. Those who described Moore’s job performance as “not so good” remained statistically flat at 13% but those who rated Moore’s job performance as “poor” grew from 21% in February to 29% in the current poll.
The Maryland Now poll is the third this year to show the gap between approval and disapproval narrowing.
Moore fared better in the survey than President Donald Trump (R) and Maryland General Assembly Democrats and Republicans.
Trump, who lost Maryland in the 2024 election, remains unpopular in the state where registered Democrats outnumber Republican voters by a roughly 2-1 margin: Just 33% said they approve of the job Trump is doing.
But Democrats, the supermajority in the Maryland House and Senate, are also unpopular. Nearly four respondents in 10 said they disapproved of the job done by Democratic state lawmakers as a group. Just about 30% approved of the job done by Republican lawmakers in Annapolis.
Since the end of legislative session, Moore has been the subject of a series of ads attempting to improve his image. Those ads are paid for by a group tied to the Democratic Governors Association. Last month, the association heavily promoted a poll conducted by Morning Consult that claimed Moore was one of the 10 most popular governors in the country, with a 31 percentage point gap between his approval and disapproval numbers.
But those figures bucked the trend of polls taken by traditional pollsters earlier this year.
Moore. a charismatic leader with no political record, entered office in January 2023. In May 2023, he boasted a 53% approval number in a survey released by the Sarah T. Hughes Center for Politics at Goucher College. Notable in that poll was the 27-percentage point difference between those who approved of Moore’s performance and those who did not.
The last year for Moore has been more difficult.
In March, Moore maintained a 55% job approval rating in a poll released by Annapolis-based Gonzales Research & Media. In that survey, the difference between those approving of Moore’s performance and those who did not approve fell to 19 percentage points compared to a poll conducted two months earlier.
Moore had a similar showing in a February poll by the Institute of Politics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. In that survey, the governor maintained a 52% job approval number but the difference in his approval and disapproval numbers shrank to 12 percentage points. Three months earlier, the same poll gave Moore a 22-percentage point cushion.
The 2025 session was the most challenging so far for Moore who faced a $3.3 billion structural budget deficit.
The poll released Monday found voters are generally pessimistic. Roughly two-thirds of those surveyed said the country is on the wrong track. Fifty-four percent have a negative view of Maryland’s economy and 67% said the amount of taxes paid in Maryland is “too high.”
Even so, 59% of voters in the poll appear to lay more of the blame on Trump and Republicans in Congress. One in four blamed Moore.