President-elect Donald Trump came nowhere close to winning reliably blue Maryland’s 10 electoral votes Tuesday, but he performed better in every one of its 23 counties and Baltimore City.

A Baltimore Banner analysis of preliminary voting data suggests that Maryland followed a pattern that seems to be playing out nationally, with Trump gaining vote shares in every geographic corner compared to 2020.

Early indications are that fewer Democrats came out to support Vice President Kamala Harris than President Joe Biden, boosting Trump’s fortunes.

In 2020, Trump lost Maryland to Biden by 33 percentage points. This year, that gap appears to be narrowing. It was about 23% as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the Associated Press, with an estimated 79% of Maryland ballots counted.

The largest shift came in Cecil County, where Trump performed 8 points better than four years ago. His vote share increased by about 2 points in Anne Arundel and Charles counties, the smallest red shifts in the state.

Trump also flipped two counties that Biden won in 2020 — Talbot and Kent, both on the Eastern Shore. The increase in Talbot County was small, from 48.5% in 2020 to 51.2% in 2024. The shift in Kent was around 5 percentage points.

“We worked hard to spread the message that there was a way to bring down high gas prices, reduce inflation, make our neighborhoods secure and even close the southern borders towards fentanyl and criminals — and that message was to vote Republican,” said Nicole Beus Harris, chairwoman of the Maryland Republican Party. “Obviously, it worked.”

Baltimore County moved 3.1 points toward Trump, while the city saw a 2.1% shift, the third-smallest in the state.

Batches of votes, including mail-in and provisional ballots, are yet to be counted. Full results aren’t expected for several days.

At polls Tuesday, many Maryland voters said they were displeased with both Trump and Harris. But some cited issues such as the economy, immigration and foreign policy as reasons to back the former president.

Derrick Taylor of Westminster voted at the Carroll County Career and Technology Center with his young daughter. Taylor said he has been delivering building materials for two decades and has noticed that costs have gone “through the roof” in recent years.

“Three and a half years ago, I was doing a lot better financially,” Taylor said. He was among 65% of Carroll County voters supporting Trump, a 5.1% increase from 2020.

In Howard County, which shifted 3 percentage points to the right, 19-year-old Angel Viveros cast his first-ever presidential vote for Trump. The economy was one of his primary concerns.

“I feel like the team that [Trump] has will make a change,” Viveros said.

Steve Purvis, a 58-year-old independent, credited Trump for not starting any wars in his previous four years as president.

“I felt our relations with other countries were the best they’ve ever been,” he said outside Jacksonville Elementary School in Baltimore County.

Many said they supported Trump even as they also had misgivings about his temperament and rhetoric.

Debebe Negash, a 51-year-old originally from Ethiopia, said that even though Trump has a history of making racist remarks about immigrants, he still believed the Republican was the better choice.

“I put my family first and help others later,” Negash said after casting his vote outside Middle River Middle School in Baltimore County. “Trump is doing the same thing putting America first.”

Jerome Cannon is a registered Democrat who supports abortion rights. He also said he has been put off by Trump’s divisive comments on immigrants. But he had even bigger concerns about Harris’ ability to represent America on a global stage.

“We’ve never had a woman of color, or any woman, in that position before,” the 63-year-old said outside a polling location in Pasadena, where he was among the first in line to vote Tuesday. “I’m ready for it. But I’m not sure about the world. The world looks for a male more so than a female.”

Cannon was among a number of voters who said reproductive rights were important to them, but still supported Trump. During his first term, Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade and end the national right to abortion.

Meredith Hillyer, 39, voted in favor of ballot Question 1, which enshrined a right to reproductive freedom in the Maryland Constitution. She said she feels that women should have control over their own bodies.

Yet that didn’t translate to backing Harris, despite the Democrat’s staunch support of abortion rights.

“She’s not the right first woman president for me,” Hillyer said Tuesday evening in Severna Park.

Through Wednesday afternoon, roughly 551,000 fewer votes had been counted in this presidential election compared to 2020. According to the Associated Press, an estimated 79% of Maryland ballots have been counted.

Baltimore Banner reporters Jessica Calefati, Kristen Griffith, Cayla Harris, Julie Scharper, Daniel Zawodny and Abby Zimmardi contributed reporting to this story.

A previous version of this story incorrectly claimed Trump lost Wicomico County in 2020. He won that county with 49.6% of the vote that year.