Massachusetts: Revolt of the middle
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A little over a year ago, President Obama carried Massachusetts by about 25 percentage points in an election that signaled a readiness for ‘change’’ -- yet was about what one would expect from the only state that backed George McGovern in 1972.
Less than one month ago, Martha Coakley, the Democratic attorney general in Massachusetts, held an apparent 15-percentage-point advantage in her contest with Republican state Sen. Scott Brown in a special election for the Senate seat of the late and long-serving Sen. Edward M. Kennedy -- about what one would expect in a state that sent Kennedy to Washington for nearly five decades.
Yet tonight, the Bay State went Republican.
This, however, is not a tale of Democrats versus Republicans.
This is a story about the vast middle ground of voters who have no real use for either party. Tonight, they rejected the party in power.
-- Mark Silva