Here are some details of the Mass. Senate election, looking at individual city/town results. As I described in my county analysis post ( http://wp.me/pn4iD-5J ), the 2006 Governor race won by Deval Patrick (55%) with a similar turnout is a good indicator of where a Democrat must do well to win state-wide.
Here are some turnout highlights:
- State-wide turnout was 53%.
- The highest turnout (71% to 76%) was mostly in smaller (<10,000 registered voters), high-income towns like Sherborn, Dover, Norfolk, Westwood, Bolton, Medfield, Stow, Topsfield, Berlin, Cohasset, Concord, and Harvard.
- The lowest turnout was mostly in lower-income, non-white urban cities like Lawrence (25%), Chelsea (32%), Springfield (34%), Holyoke + Southbridge (35%), New Bedford (36%), Worcester + Fall River (37%), Lynn (38%), and Lowell (39%).
- Following the conventional wisdom of voter turnout (see below), this was expected, but the range was much wider than it was in the 2006 General. In that election, Patrick motivated those low-income/non-white voters to turn out at a higher rate.
- The biggest drops in turnout from 2006 to 2010 (minus 8 to 13 percentage points) were in places like Lawrence, New Bedford, Chelsea, Fall River, and Worcester. These are mostly places where Coakley did well and Patrick did very well.
- The biggest gains in turnout from 2006 to 2010 (plus 5 to 7 percentage points) were in places like Norfolk, North Attleborough,Wrentham, Douglas, Franklin, Plainville, and Weymouth. These are almost all places where Brown was very strong, with at least 64% of the vote.
