MA US Senate Special Election: Official Election Day & Results Thread + Poll

[Rocky Rockefeller]

the repubs are idiots for sitting out this race. But no use fretting about what could have been.

[Hatman 🍁]

Gomez underperforms Brown '12 by 10 points in Provincetown.  Gay men are the most racist group in existence possibly including white Mississippians.  I'm not joking.

Yes, you are.

I can't think of any other groups of people I deal with on a semi-regular basis who will often, unprompted, start talking about how much they hate n[inks]ers.  One of said persons was (visibly) half-black himself!

Well, you know, the two people from Quebec that I work with often talk about the n[inks]ers too. So yeah, pretty much everyone from Quebec are basically racist like white Mississippians.

uhh... bad example

[Holmes]

Gomez underperforms Brown '12 by 10 points in Provincetown.  Gay men are the most racist group in existence possibly including white Mississippians.  I'm not joking.

Yes, you are.

I can't think of any other groups of people I deal with on a semi-regular basis who will often, unprompted, start talking about how much they hate n[inks]ers.  One of said persons was (visibly) half-black himself!

Well, you know, the two people from Quebec that I work with often talk about the n[inks]ers too. So yeah, pretty much everyone from Quebec are basically racist like white Mississippians.

Well, actually...

Heh.

[Brittain33]

I like that you're referring to gay men as if all gay men were white.

Anyway, some gay men are racist, some not.

[Keystone Phil]

the repubs are idiots for sitting out this race. But no use fretting about what could have been.

And if they had gotten in, Markey would have more easily tied Gomez to the GOP and the Dems would have poured more resources in, too. In the end, a wash.

[jaichind]

the repubs are idiots for sitting out this race. But no use fretting about what could have been.

And if they had gotten in, Markey would have more easily tied Gomez to the GOP and the Dems would have poured more resources in, too. In the end, a wash.

My thoughts exactly.

[ag]

W/ 96% reporting, Markey margin is 9.4%, w/ Gomez at 45.1%. Given that Boston is (slightly) underreporting, it is likely it will be (slightly) bigger in the end. So, might, actually, round to double digits

[jaichind]

Looks like a batch of votes came in from Boston and now Markey is over-performing Warren from 2012 in Boston.

[jaichind]

Interesting.  Every county Gomez won he won by over-performing Brown in 2012 and every Markey won he won by over-performing Warren in 2012.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

the repubs are idiots for sitting out this race. But no use fretting about what could have been.

None of them could have won except Scott Brown, so this is how I feel about him.

[ag]

97% reporting and it is now 54.9% Markey vs. 44.7% Gomez. 10% even without rounding and 17 precincts still outstanding from Boston. Not a disaster for the Dems by any means.

[tpfkaw]

I like that you're referring to gay men as if all gay men were white.

Anyway, some gay men are racist, some not.

Actually, I'm not saying that at all, as you might have inferred by reading my posts.  Nevertheless, like most groups, most gay men are indeed white, especially in Provincetown, Massachusetts.  And, in my admittedly anecdotal experience, which is all we can go on since people will generally not admit to being racists in polling, gay men of all colors are rather more likely to be fond of crossing the bridge from "non-PC" to "blatantly offensive" than most.

I admit this is a touchy subject because it's exactly the talking point bigots love; "gays are racist so it's okay that I don't like them!"  Nevertheless, that doesn't make it untrue.

[Eraserhead]

Looks like a good night for the polling firms.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

WalterMitty's prediction that Gomez would (or at least could) win Bristol and Hampden turns out to have been correct, but I think it's fair to say the idea that Markey would underperform in Middlesex was ill-founded. He won it by more than I thought he would.

[jaichind]

I also find it interesting that the smallest county, Nantucket, with only 2000 voters this time, turns out to be the bellwether county. 

[Vosem]

Massachusetts is a very flexible state, isn't it? Hope Baker can pull out Governor in 2014. Let's be honest with each other, Brown's not running.

[ElectionAtlas]

I've created the preliminary special election result map/page

[Beet]

This probably gets asked every single election, but why is western MA so Democratic? I just noticed they gave over 60% to Coakley in 2010.

[ElectionsGuy]

This probably gets asked every single election, but why is western MA so Democratic? I just noticed they gave over 60% to Coakley in 2010.

Similar to Vermont, very socially liberal and also went through the transformation in which the progressive republicans back then became liberal.

[Tender Branson]

Yeah nobody takes Suffolk seriously.

Well, turns out Suffolk was spot on with their poll ...

[Tender Branson]

A rather underwhelming result for Markey. I thought he would win with ca. 16 points.

But a win is a win, I guess.

[smoltchanov]

Very uninspiring win for Markey. He confirmed once again that he is a dull candidate (and, probably, will be dull Senator). But - that's usually not enough to lose in Massachusetts when you have a "proper letter" after your name

[greenforest32]

HuffPo's awesome interactive map.

That's awesome that we get the city and city-equivalent results in addition to the county results, I wish all states reported that.

How does that work in Massachusetts though? I remember hearing the state's county governments were effectively abolished so does that mean every 'town' has a city election clerk or does the state handle that function?

[tpfkaw]

How does that work in Massachusetts though? I remember hearing the state's county governments were effectively abolished so does that mean every 'town' has a city election clerk

Yes.

[greenforest32]

How does that work in Massachusetts though? I remember hearing the state's county governments were effectively abolished so does that mean every 'town' has a city election clerk

Yes.

Interesting. There must be no unincorporated areas left in the state that aren't covered by a town then.

Here there are plenty of unincorporated areas with county clerks handling elections and those clerks mainly report county-wide results so you have to dig into the precinct data if you want to construct the city results.