Massachusetts Voters Up for Grabs in Primary Contests

Massachusetts can often feel like a liberal afterthought in the crush of Super Tuesday presidential primary contests.

That isn't the case this year.

Both the Republican and Democratic races are still very much in play ahead of next week's primary. Will Massachusetts Democrats follow the lead of virtually the entire party establishment in the state and back Hillary Clinton like they did eight years ago? Or will the same voters who elected U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren be drawn to Bernie Sanders, who has echoed many of her core themes?

On the Republican side, will GOP voters stay true to their Massachusetts moderate reputation or instead run off with one of the GOP outsiders? And what about independents who comprise more than half of Bay State voters?

This primary, Massachusetts politics is anything but predictable.

The Bay State - awash in college campuses and a left-of-center Democratic primary base - may end up being fertile ground for Sanders who could benefit from the lengthy exposure the Vermont senator gained in the Boston media market during the run-up to his New Hampshire primary victory.

Clinton, who handily defeated then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama in the 2008 Massachusetts primary - 56 percent to 40 percent - has been endorsed by much of the state's Democratic political establishment with one notable exception. Warren, perhaps the state's highest-profile Democrat, has declined to endorse either Clinton or Sanders, even as Sanders builds on Warren's criticisms of Wall Street and rising student load debt.

"Her silence has given Sanders and his people an opening in Massachusetts that he might not have had otherwise," said Peter Ubertaccio, director of the Martin Institute for Law & Society at Stonehill College.

Sanders invoked Warren during a boisterous campaign rally Monday at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

"What our campaign has been talking about is the fact that we have a corrupt campaign finance system, the fact that we have a rigged economy, something your senator, Elizabeth Warren, has talked about a lot," he said.

Among the top issues for Massachusetts voters are the state's ongoing battle with opioid addiction and overdose deaths, transportation, taxes and charter schools. The state also has some of the highest energy and housing costs in the country.

While Massachusetts is perceived as a solidly Democratic state, a majority of its more than 4 million registered voters consider themselves independent and are not enrolled in either major party.

Those voters, who can participate in either party primary on Tuesday, could add another layer of volatility to both the Democratic and Republican races, especially if they gravitate toward nontraditional candidates such as Sanders or Donald Trump, who scored a commanding win in neighboring New Hampshire and drew enthusiastic crowds at rallies held in Massachusetts earlier in the campaign.

And while Massachusetts is generally seen as a liberal stronghold, voters here have elected several Republican governors over the past two decades, including the state's enormously popular Gov. Charlie Baker.

The moderate Republican is sitting on the sidelines for Tuesday's primary after briefly backing the now-defunct campaign of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Baker has, however, openly questioned whether Trump has the temperament or "seriousness of purpose" to be president.

The Boston Globe, in an unusual editorial Tuesday entitled "Stop Trump in Massachusetts," urged unenrolled voters - even those who ordinarily lean Democratic - to pull Republican ballots and vote for Ohio Gov. John Kasich, whom the newspaper called a "mainstream conservative," and who has been endorsed by another former Massachusetts GOP governor, William Weld.

"It's really an open guess on who might pull ahead," Ubertaccio said of the Republican contest.

At stake in Massachusetts are 116 delegates for the Democrats, 42 for the GOP.