Voters head to Massachusetts polls in large numbers
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Neither rain, wind nor snow stopped Massachusetts from heading to a sizable voter turnout today in the closely watched battle for the U.S. Senate seat once considered the property of the Democratic Party.
Hours before the polls were scheduled to close at 8 p.m. EST, state election officials were predicting a turnout of 40% to 55% of those eligible to vote in the special election that pitted a hard-charging, previously little-known Republican riding a wave of conservative discontent against a Democrat desperately trying to cling to a seat that polls just weeks ago showed she should win by double-digits.
“By definition this will be a record,” Brian McNiff, a spokesman for Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin, said in a telephone interview. In 2006, the last major state election year, about 56% of those eligible to vote turned out.
In the city of Boston, a Democratic stronghold, the turnout was about 23% by early afternoon, McNiff said. The Dec. 8 primary had a turnout of less than 20% statewide.
“Unless the result is knife-edge, we should have results by 9:30 to 10 p.m.” McNiff said. The vote is tabulated by optical scanners, with about 10% on paper ballots, he said.
Whatever the outcome, the surprisingly strong showing by a conservative Republican has sent shock waves through the Washington political establishment preparing for national midterm elections.
Republican state Sen. Scott Brown was suddenly the favorite in late polls over Atty. Gen. Martha Coakley in the race that could determine whether Democrats can continue to have 60 votes in the Senate – the number needed to break any Republican filibuster.
Brown actively campaigned against President Obama’s domestic agenda, pledging to vote against the pending healthcare overhaul bill, in effect scuttling the centerpiece of the president’s first year in office. Obama made a last-minute campaign stop for Coakley, putting his political fortunes on the line.
But the possibility of a Brown victory has sent Democrats scurrying to figure out a strategy to pass healthcare reform without the needed 60th vote in the Senate.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi today pledged there would be a healthcare bill regardless of the Massachusetts outcome.
“We’re right on course,” Pelosi said at an afternoon news conference. “We will have a healthcare reform bill, and it will be soon.”
At the White House, spokesman Robert Gibbs refused to speculate about the election.
“We’ll have a chance to discuss the outcome of the election when we know the outcome of the election, which, as many people know, is ongoing,” he said.
But elsewhere in the Democratic political universe, there were already recriminations and blame being assessed for Coakley’s performance. She was being quietly criticized for running a low-key campaign and for such gaffes as calling a hero Red Sox pitcher a Yankee fan, the equivalent in some circles of calling an angel a colleague of Satan.
Both candidates voted in their home districts.
“It would make everybody the 41st senator, and it would bring fairness and discussion back to the equation,” Brown said in Wrentham.
“We’re paying attention to the ground game,” Coakley said in Medford. “Every game has its own dynamics.”
-- Michael Muskal
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