A Blip?

The Lowell Elections Division does an excellent job, even when one of the Commissioners is involved in a bad auto accident on the day of voting (good luck in your recover, Tom.  Oh, and is there a "line of duty" determination here?).  I wandered by Friday morning about 0930 and they had the Election Summary Report ready and on the counter.

As an aside, here is the official Dick Howe take.

One of the interesting things to me is the small number of contested elections.  For the Democrats there was the Governor's Council, with four candidates and Eileen R Duff (Gloucester) winning.  On the Republican site it was Jon Golnik over Tom Weaver (bigger spread in Lowell than overall, 71.96% vs 27.76%).

The other thing interesting to me is that for non-contested races the person listed usually wins 98.14% or more of the vote.  A pretty straight line from the first Democrat to the last Republican (Greens had no one listed on the ballot).

There is one exception, a blip if you will.  Senate Candidate Elizabeth Warren received 95.94% of the non-blank vote.  (Sheriff Koutoujian and the Candidates for Governor's Council had more blank votes than Professor Warren, but no one else.)  There were 66 write-in votes (4.06% of the votes cast) for Senator in Congress, which is high for a contest with a candidate on the ballot.

This might might just be a blip or it might indicate softness in Democratic support for Prof Warren. Or it might just be a sign that Democratic Voters are unhappy that Prof Warren was the only person on the ballot.  The other candidates, including Mayor Setti Warren and lawyer Melissa DeFranco, have dropped out (been encouraged to drop out?).  I met both of these then active candidates when I was a credentialed blogger at the last Democratic Issues Convention and was favorably impressed.  By the way, I would like for the Republicans to have an "Issues Convention" every other two year period.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

Regards  —  Cliff