Most Maryland voters say they pay too much in taxes, according to one Maryland pollster, as Gov. Wes Moore’s approval rating drops but holds majority support.
Of those surveyed, 58.4%, said taxes in Maryland are “too much,” according to the poll, while 40.6% of voters said taxes were “about right.”
The poll, released Tuesday by Gonzales Research and Media Services, shows a partisan divide among Marylanders on tax policy. Of registered Democrats, 41% say they pay too much in taxes, and 57% say taxes are “about right.” Republicans and Independents are more critical of the state’s taxes, with 88% of Republicans and 68% of Independents saying the taxes are too much.
The poll comes as the state gears up for the 90-day legislative session starting on Wednesday, where policymakers will have to plan to address the projected $1.4 billion budget deficit. Gov. Wes Moore and other state Democrats have promised not to raise taxes during this year’s session, opting instead to cut spending and minimally tap the state’s rainy day fund.
Last session, the state lawmakers passed new taxes targeting top earners, cannabis users, sports betters and businesses that use technology services. Carter Elliot, a spokesperson for Moore’s campaign, when asked to respond to the poll, said the governor “led the charge to provide a tax cut or no change in income taxes to 94% of all Marylanders.”
When asked about the notion of Moore being able to solve the budget deficit this year without increasing taxes, Senate Minority Leader Steve Hershey said, “I don’t necessarily believe the governor when he says that last year, he said the bar for raising taxes was high, and he jumped right over that,” he said. “Democrats are saying we don’t want to tax during an election year. Well, that shouldn’t be the qualifier. You shouldn’t want to tax period. You should be able to find a way to manage the government within the revenues that are coming in.”
Gonzales was previously hired by Ed Hale, a competitor of Moore’s, to look at a race between Moore and Hale, according to a report in Maryland Matters.
“No matter how many pollsters the Hale campaign puts on their payroll, they can’t change the fact that Wes Moore is one of the most popular governors in the country and Republicans are going to lose big in Maryland this November,” said Kevin Donohoe, a spokesperson for the Democratic Governors’ Association.
Gonzales Research has pointed to a steady decline in Moore’s job approval from September 2024 to January 2026, but the approval numbers remain steady from a University of Maryland, Baltimore County poll from November.
More than half of the polled registered Maryland voters, 52%, approve of Moore’s job as governor. The approval rating is down 12 percentage points in Gonzales’ polling since September 2024. About 73% of registered Democrats and 42% of independents said they approved of the job done by the governor.
“What was once a comfortable margin is now a tightening squeeze,” the Gonzales Research’s poll synopsis said.
The job approval percent is also the same as a UMBC poll from November, which had remained steady from a February 2025 poll also conducted by the university.
Moore’s team, in a statement responding to the poll, emphasized the decrease in homicides and increases in job growth under his administration.
“Those are the kinds of results Governor Moore will continue to work day and night to deliver for Maryland,” Elliot said.
State lawmakers of his own party have said that their relationship with the governor is tense as lawmakers overrode most of Moore’s vetoes from last session and congressional redistricting is moving forward without the support of Senate President Bill Ferguson.
Moore is up for reelection for the first time this year. He won the 2022 gubernatorial election with 64.53% of the vote against Republican Dan Cox. No major Republican politician in the state has announced an election bid against Moore.
If the election were held today, 49.9% of polled registered voters said they would support Moore’s reelection bid. About 16% polled voters said they were undecided about the election, 28% said they would support a Republican challenger and 5.8% said they would support a third-party challenger. While Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly said they would support their party’s likely nominee, unaffiliated voters were split: 35.2% supported re-electing Moore and 32.1% support a Republican challenger.
Maryland voters are split on the direction of the state, with 46.9% of voters saying the state is going in the right direction and 44.1% reporting the state going in the right direction. Democrats were more likely to say the state was going in the right direction than Republicans.
The poll consisted of 808 registered voters likely to vote in the 2026 midterms and was conducted from Dec. 21 to Jan. 6.
Have a news tip? Contact Katharine Wilson at kwilson@baltsun.com.