Around 600,000 of the commonwealth’s almost 5 million registered voters cast ballots in the Democratic primary, which saw Biden net over 80% of the vote.
“It was a great day for the president, and a great day, frankly, to kick off the general election," said Steve Kerrigan, chair of the Massachusetts Democratic Party. “It was less so, of course, for President Trump and the Republican Party, which seems to be very much adrift and trying to figure out where they stand. A plurality of some of Nikki Haley's voters have said that they refuse to vote for Donald Trump. So, he's got a big problem up there in galvanizing the Republican voters behind his campaign. And it's not surprising, because he's losing ground with key parts of a coalition that he needs in order to win. He's losing independent voters, he’s losing voters with a college education, and he's losing folks who reject the idea of the 2020 election was stolen. He’s losing huge chunks of the electorate he needs to win.”
WAMC asked Kerrigan if he’s concerned about the precipitous drop in turnout from the last Democratic presidential primary, when 1.4 million voters headed to the polls.
“What it means is that most of people in America understood this to be a two-person race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump,” the Mass Dems chair answered.
He dismissed recent polls showing Biden continuing to lag in a head-to-head against Trump.
“There are polls that have been coming out for years that say, the Democrats are in trouble, that candidates are in trouble, that we're going to be losing elections," said Kerrigan. "Every election since 2017, everyone said, the Democrats are going to be losing. And then the one thing that happens that changes all that is people vote. So, every time people say Democrats are going to lose- The 2020 elections, we won. Everyone said that, people said they were going to lose the 2022 midterms in the red wave- Remember the red wave that was going to sweep across the country? It didn't happen.”
The second-place finisher was “no preference” with over 9%, likely the result of a campaign launched by progressive activists to protest the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
“We just exceeded all expectations. We had set an internal goal for ourselves of 10,000 votes, and- In just five days of organizing with 400-plus volunteers, and we fundraised $6,000 and sent over 240,000 texts," movement spokesperson Dr. Lara Jirmanus told WAMC. “55,000 people voted ‘no preference’ in Massachusetts, and I think that this just shows that there's a national movement, it's not going away, and voters are furious that our elected officials have been ignoring us for months and months.”
The effort to reflect internal Democratic division over the billions in military aid Biden has approved for Israel was modeled on the unexpected success of a similar campaign in the Michigan primary, where 100,000 voted “uncommitted.”
“We just hear these empty words from President Biden about how he cares about civilians while he goes behind everyone's back and sends additional weapons to Congress. Even Senators in Massachusetts – for example, Warren and Markey – kept saying that they are all for conditioning military aid, but when it came down to it, they voted to send more bombs to kill and commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza," said Jirmanus. "This is totally unacceptable.”
During the last Democratic primary in Massachusetts – where Biden squeaked by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders with 33% to Sanders’ 26% – “no preference” received less than .4% of the vote.
“We also are sending a clear message to Biden and the DNC that they can't keep offering us these choices," Jirmanus continued. "People are sick of the lesser of two evils, and we are not, we do not accept the choice between genocide and fascism- And that's what's being offered to us as voters. Two-thirds of all US voters have supported ceasefire since late October. 80% of Democrats, now over half of all voters support conditioning military aid to Israel. They just have to start doing what the voters want. It has to be the voters over AIPAC.”
Kerrigan offered the Mass Dems’ take on the “no preference” result.
“If you'd look back to 2012, when a Democratic president was up for reelection, it got about 10%. You look back at 1996, the last time a Democratic president before that was, I want to say it was 7% or 8%," he told WAMC. "So, you know, it's not an unexpected number.”
Candidates Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson took home around 5% and 3% respectively, in the Democratic race.
Across the aisle, Trump secured 60% of the vote over second-place finisher and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who received around 37% of the total. While Haley notched her second win the primary with a victory in Vermont on Tuesday, the ex-South Carolina governor announced the suspension of her campaign Wednesday morning. Trump now stands virtually unopposed as he prepares for a rematch with Biden in November for the oldest presidential contest in American history between two historically unpopular candidates.
The Massachusetts Republican Party did not respond to a request for comment.
