By Michael Teitelbaum, CQ Staff

CQ Politics Presidential Race Rating: Safe Democratic

Electoral Votes: 10

Political geography doesn’t give away Maryland’s identity as one of the nation’s most consistently Democratic states. The Eastern Shore region and rural western Maryland are mainly conservative and Republican-leaning. But that strongly Democratic strip up the middle, linking metropolitan Baltimore to the Washington suburbs, has most of the state’s population and dominates its elections.

Bill Clinton twice, Al Gore and John Kerry have all secured Maryland’s 10 electoral votes with ease; the narrowest victory in that group was Kerry’s 13 percentage-point margin four years ago. And Barack Obama looks virtually certain to take the streak to five. He already has a winning record in the state, having bested Hillary Rodham Clinton by 25 points in a Feb. 12 primary. In that contest he benefitted from overwhelming support from the African-American community — 29 percent of the state’s population is black — and solid support from Maryland’s many affluent, college-educated white liberal Democrats.

The Democrats’ clout in the state extends from the governor’s office, which Martin O’Malley won two years ago, to its two Senate seats, held by Barbara A. Mikulski since 1987 and Benjamin L. Cardin since last year. The Democrats who hold six of the eight House seats are all expected to win easily — including the two in the party leadership, Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer and Chris Van Hollen , who runs the party’s House campaign organization, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

McCain won the Feb. 12 Republican primary, but the 29 percent taken by former Gov. Mike Huckabee was evidence of the problems MCain faced among his party’s conservative activist wing. The restiveness on the right emerged the same day to cost nine-term moderate Republican Wayne T. Gilchrest his House seat in the 1st District, based on the Eastern Shore and Baltimore outskirts.

Gilchrest lost to state Sen. Andy Harris, who ran on a strongly conservative platform. Hard feelings from that race prompted some former Gilchrest aides to align with Harris’ Democratic opponent, county prosecutor Frank Kratovil Jr., and national Democratic strategists have hinted at a strong push for an upset. CQ Politics rates the race Republican Favored. The seat is one of only two of the eight House seats in the state held by a Republican. The other, in the state’s panhandle, is held safely by Roscoe G. Bartlett .