Massachusetts

Edward J. Markey won a third term in the Senate over Republican John Deaton, 63.4% to 32.1%, and Gov. Maura Healey won a second four-year term over Republican Michael Roger Minogue, 62.0% to 34.7%. The Associated Press called the governor’s race just as the polls closed.^{1, 2} Democrats also kept every other statewide office, MultiState reported; our count has Andrea Joy Campbell as attorney general, William Francis Galvin as secretary of state and Deborah B. Goldberg as treasurer. All nine U.S. House seats stayed Democratic. James P. McGovern, Katherine M. Clark and Ayanna S. Pressley had no opponent on the ballot, and the North Shore elected Dan Koh, whom WBUR called the state’s newest member of Congress.^{1, 3}

Kamala Harris carried Massachusetts by 25.3 points in 2024. Markey won by 31.3 points, a result 5.9 points further toward the Democrats, while Healey’s margin of 27.3 points was 1.9 points wider than Harris’s. Markey drew 78 votes for every 100 of Harris’s, and Deaton 67 for every 100 of Donald Trump’s. The governor’s race drew 2,627,180 votes, 106% of the 2022 total and 76% of the 2024 presidential vote, on a count that is still open.

The Boston area, which casts 63% of the vote, went from D+31.7 to D+36.7, a move of 5.1 points. The larger moves came where Democrats had been weakest. Massachusetts’s part of the Providence area went from D+1.3 to D+12.6, and the Springfield area from D+8.9 to D+18.2. The Worcester area moved 6.2 points. The smaller metro areas, the most Democratic part of the state in 2024 at D+32.7, moved least, 3.7 points.

The Providence-area part is Bristol County, and no large county moved further. Harris carried it by 1.3 points; Markey carried it by 12.6, on 201,840 votes. Across that part of the Providence area Deaton drew 62 votes for every 100 of Trump’s, his weakest showing in any region. Hampden County, around Springfield, went from D+8.9 to D+18.2, and Essex County, in the Boston area, from D+20.3 to D+29.1. The largest county, Middlesex County, moved only 4.7 points, from a much higher base. No county changed sides, and none of the 14 voted Republican in either year.

Democrats keep the governor’s office and large majorities in both chambers of the Legislature.^{3, 4} The seat counts are provisional. MultiState’s tracker has the Senate unchanged at 35 Democrats and 5 Republicans and the House at 137 Democrats, 21 Republicans and one independent, with one race still being counted; by those counts Democrats hold more than four-fifths of each chamber.³ WBUR reported on November 9 that Republicans lost four House seats, among them the one held by the retiring minority leader, Brad Jones, and took one from a Democrat. Two of the new Democrats are 19 and 23 years old: Daniel Darris-O’Connor defeated Rep. Marc Lombardo of Billerica, and Jack Richardson of Falmouth defeated Rep. David Vieira, both of whom had been in office since 2011.^{3, 4}

WBUR reported that the office of Secretary of State William Francis Galvin, re-elected in our count, says the election will likely be certified on the first Wednesday in December.¹ Before the election Healey had asked the Legislature for energy legislation and not received it, and WBUR reported that conference committees have until the session ends on January 5 to settle pending bills.⁴

The day after her re-election Healey named housing production, primary care and mental health services, new rules for social media and protecting workers as artificial intelligence spreads. “These are all things that we’re going to be focused on out of the gate,” she told reporters, according to The Boston Globe.⁵

A law proposed by initiative passes in Massachusetts with a majority of those voting on it, so long as the yes votes equal at least 30 percent of all ballots cast; a law put to a referendum is repealed only if a majority votes no and the no votes reach that same 30 percent.^{6, 7} Question 1, which extends the public records law to the Legislature and the governor’s office, passed with 85.9% voting yes. Lawmakers have been working on a bill that could supersede it, and State Auditor Diana DiZoglio, who led the campaign, has pledged to sue if that bill becomes law.¹ Question 4 brings Election Day registration, with a provisional ballot cast at the polls, to state and municipal elections; it passed with 56.4% and takes effect January 1, 2028. Question 2, which lets employees of the state’s public defender agency unionize, passed with 64.0%, and Question 6, a conservation fund paid for with sales tax on sporting goods, recreational vehicles and spending at golf courses, passed with 60.8%.¹

Question 9 put the state’s 2024 gun law to a referendum, and voters kept it: the yes side, which upholds the law, has 67.3% in our count. Question 8, an effort to repeal the legal recreational marijuana market, drew 24.4% yes and failed. So did Question 3, which would have created all-party primaries, at 39.0%; its supporters conceded just after 11 p.m. on election night. The closest of the nine was Question 7, which would have overridden local zoning to allow single-family homes on smaller lots. It failed at 49.4% yes, and the Associated Press called it on November 6. Question 5, which would have changed the state revenue cap so that taxpayer rebates come more often, also failed, at 47.7%.¹

Republicans held no office on the statewide ballot and no U.S. House seat before the election, and they won none; the closest House race was the Ninth District, which Bill Keating won by 21.7 points. Their one gain came in the state House, on the South Coast, where Jesse St. Gelais beat Democratic Rep. Steven Ouellette by 459 votes out of more than 17,500.^{3, 4} Most incumbent legislators ran unopposed, WBUR reported.⁴

Neither of the state’s Senate seats is on the 2028 ballot, and Markey says this term will be his last.¹ Healey told reporters she would serve all four years of hers.⁵ Election Day registration takes effect January 1, 2028, so the presidential primary that March would be the first election it could apply to.¹ The Boston Globe reported that antiabortion activists have gathered enough signatures to temporarily halt the abortion law Healey signed over the summer and to put its repeal on the 2028 ballot.⁵

One state House race was uncalled on November 9: in a district that includes Wareham, Carver and part of Middleborough, Democrat Sarah Hewins led Republican Rep. John Gaskey by 89 votes.⁴