I think I’ll try to get a job with one of the local television stations as a political prognosticator. My record in Tuesday’s election was perfect — every candidate I voted for lost, and every ballot question I voted against won. If they want to accurately forecast election results, all they have to do is ask me who I’m voting for, and then predict that candidate’s opponent as the winner.

Actually, I wasn’t even voting for the candidates I was voting for. I was voting against their opponents. Tuesday’s results show just how far the electorate of Maryland has strayed from my views. Now that sounds like an egotistical statement, doesn’t it? But half of it’s true: I’ve held the views I now hold practically my entire adult life. Maryland voters never really held views that were that close to mine, but at one time they at least were capable of voting for — gasp! — Republicans.

Now I understand why former Republican Gov. Bob Ehrlich ran such a lackluster campaign when he tried to make a political comeback in 2010. His internal polling probably told him it was no use. Even if not, he probably wasn’t all that eager to return to the Governor’s Mansion, anyway. The last time he was there, from 2003 – 2007, he faced veto-proof Democrat majorities in both houses of the legislature that blocked everything he attempted to do and overrode every one of his vetoes. And they did it for the same reason a dog licks its privates: because they could.

The fact is, Maryland, with its large population of federal employees, government contractors , lobbyists, and people on public assistance — what columnist Ilana Mercer calls the “oink sector” — has become a very left-wing state, and is becoming more so. The election results proved that.

Thus, while Barack Obama was winning the national popular vote by less than two percentage points, he won Maryland’s by 25. The votes on just about everything else that was on the ballot in Maryland pretty much mirrored this result:

• Democrat Senator Ben Cardin defeated Dan Bongino by a better than two-to-one margin. If I had known it would be that lopsided, I would have voted for my old friend, the Libertarian candidate Dean Ahmad.
• Nancy Jacobs lost to the incumbent 2nd District Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, also by a better than two-to-one margin.
• All four ballot questions that I voted against passed, and the Congressional redistricting question — which even The Washington Post and the über-liberal Baltimore Sun said should be defeated — passed by the largest margin.
• Democrats won seven of the state’s eight Congressional seats. Of course they were helped in this by the obscene gerrymander which the voters refused to undo.

The bottom line: the Republican Party has become irrelevant in Maryland. Although it remains strong on the Eastern Shore and in western Maryland, where Republicans still manage to get elected to local office, the only way a Republican can win a statewide office is if the Democrats run an incompetent campaign, as they did in 2002.

These election results most likely will embolden Gov. Martin O’Malley as he tries to build his reputation as a progressive in preparation for running for President in 2016. He’s raised taxes so many times since he’s been in office that most of us thought he wouldn’t be able able to do it again. I fully expect him to ask the legislature for either some major new tax — perhaps an internet sales tax, or a personal property tax for households — or an increase in income tax rates. All I can say, is hold onto your wallets.

In the meantime, I plan to do some house-hunting in Pennsylvania and Virginia.