2016 United States Senate election in Maryland
election for U.S. senator from Maryland
The 2016 United States Senate election in Maryland took place on November 8, 2016, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the State of Maryland, concurrently with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as well as other elections to the United States Senate in other states and elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections.
Incumbent Democratic Senator Barbara Mikulski decided to retire after five terms in the Senate. Primary elections were held April 26, 2016, in which Chris Van Hollen and Kathy Szeliga were chosen as the Democratic and Republican party nominees, respectively. In addition, the Green Party chose Margaret Flowers and the Libertarian Party chose Arvin Vohra as their respective nominees.
Van Hollen was heavily favored to win the election. He ultimately won with over 60% of the vote. As typically occurs with the state's elections, most support for the Democratic nominee, Van Hollen, came from the densely populated Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area in central Maryland, while the Republican nominee, Szeliga, did well in the more sparsely populated areas on the Eastern Shore and in Western Maryland, and narrowly won Anne Arundel County, home to the state capital Annapolis, as well as exurban Frederick County.
Background
Mikulski first ran for the U.S. Senate in 1974, losing to Republican incumbent Charles Mathias. Mikulski then served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1977 to 1987 and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986, succeeding the retiring Mathias. She was re-elected by large margins in 1992, 1998, 2004 and 2010.
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