By MEHEDI MAROF Capital News Service  As Marylanders vote Tuesday, unaffiliated voters are fewer than 2,000 away from outnumbering Republicans statewide. At the end of October, Maryland had 1,014,876 active Republican voters and 1,012,957 active unaffiliated voters, according to mont hly figures the State Board of Elections released Monday. Each group makes up about 23% of the state’s roughly 4.3 million active voters. Four years ago, just before Maryland’s 2022 governor’s race, Republicans outnumbered unaffiliated voters by nearly 155,000. A year ago, the gap was about 45,000. At the end of September, it was about 4,100. Since October 2022, the number of unaffiliated voters has grown by about 167,000, or nearly 20%. Republicans added about 14,000 voters over the same period. Where Democrats stand Democrats remain by far the largest group, with about 2.24 million active voters, just over half the total. But their numbers have stalled. Active Democrats peaked at about 2.29 million in November 2020 and are down about 20,000 since 2022, though they gained about 13,000 over the past year. The rise of unaffiliated voters goes back more than a decade. Since 2011, the number of unaffiliated voters has nearly doubled. Democrats grew 14% and Republicans 9% over the same period. That has changed the makeup of Maryland’s electorate. The unaffiliated share of active voters rose from about 15% to 23%. The Democratic share fell from about 56% to 51.5%, and the Republican share slipped to about 23.4%, its lowest point in data going back to 2011. Across the stateUnaffiliated voters grew in all 24 of Maryland’s voting jurisdictions, its 23 counties and Baltimore City, since the last governor’s race. In five of them, unaffiliated voters now outnumber Republicans: Montgomery, Prince George’s, Howard and Charles counties and Baltimore City. Charles is the newest. In 2022, Republicans there outnumbered unaffiliated voters by about 1,200. Now unaffiliated voters outnumber Republicans by about 4,700. In the other 19 jurisdictions, Republicans still outnumber unaffiliated voters, but that gap has narrowed sharply in some large counties. In Baltimore County, it shrank from about 29,300 to about 8,900. In Anne Arundel, it was cut by more than half, to about 15,000. Democrats, meanwhile, lost voters in 20 of the 24 jurisdictions. The biggest drops came in their strongholds, Prince George’s County, Baltimore City and Montgomery County, though those losses were small, 1% to 2%. Democrats still make up most of the voters in all three. Democrats are still the largest of the three groups in nine jurisdictions, including all five where unaffiliated voters outnumber Republicans. Republicans are the largest group in the other 15. That now includes Dorchester and Kent counties on the Eastern Shore, where Democrats were the largest group in 2022. Republicans make up the largest share of voters in Western Maryland. In Garrett County, they outnumber unaffiliated voters about 4-to-1. Note: The figures include active voters only. They are compiled by Skipjack, an elections data site maintained by Derek Willis, a lecturer at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, based on data from the Maryland State Board of Elections. ...read more read less