When voters arrive at the polls Tuesday morning, many races will have already been decided — either because their local representative didn’t face a primary challenge in September, or because they don’t face a challenger from the opposite party.
However, Massachusetts voters will choose their next governor Tuesday. The candidates for governor are state Attorney General Maura Healey and former state Rep. Geoff Diehl, and the candidates for lieutenant governors are Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll and former state Rep. Leah Cole Allen. Healey and Driscoll make up the Democratic ticket, while Diehl and Allen comprise the Republican ticket.
Nationally, every U.S. House of Representatives seat will be up for grabs on Tuesday. Voters will also determine the fate of 35 U.S. Senate seats and 36 governorships.
Massachusetts voters will also choose between former Boston City Councilor Andrea Campbell, who is running as a Democrat, and Republican attorney Jay McMahon for state Attorney General. Swampscott Republican Anthony Amore will square off against state Sen. Diana DiZoglio from Methuen in the state auditor’s race.
The few contested races set to be decided on Tuesday include a race for the sixth congressional district, where incumbent Democrat Seth Moulton is facing a challenge from Peabody Republican Bob May and Georgetown Libertarian Mark Tashjian, and a race for the Second Essex district in the state senate. In that race, incumbent Joan Lovely (D-Salem) is attempting to fend off a challenge from Peabody Republican Damian Anketell.
State Sen. Brendan Crighton (D-Lynn) will face a challenger, though Swampscott Independent Annalisa Salustri does not appear to have campaigned against Crighton, and no biographical information could be found for Salustri.
Lynnfield Republican Michael Walsh is running against incumbent Democrat Eileen Duff, of Gloucester, in the race for fifth district councilor on the Governor’s Council. Terrence Kennedy, a Lynnfield Democrat, is running unopposed in his bid for the sixth district councilor seat.
Tuesday’s election will also solidify State Rep.-elect Jenny Armini’s victory in the Eighth Essex District and State Rep.-elect Manny Cruz’s victory in the Seventh Essex District, as both face no Republican challenger. State Reps. Donald Wong (R-Saugus), Dan Cahill (D-Lynn), Pete Capano (D-Lynn), Tom Walsh (D-Peabody), and Sally Kerans (D-Danvers) are all running unopposed and will serve another two-year term beginning in January.
Neither Essex County Sheriff Kevin Coppinger, who fended off a primary challenge from social worker Virginia Leigh, nor state Rep. Paul Tucker (D-Salem), who won the race for essex district attorney over Middleton Attorney James O’Shea, face Republican challengers on Tuesday, meaning both men will have their primary victories solidified.
Longtime Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin, who won a primary race of his own, forecast that around 2.2 million of the state’s 4.8 million registered voters, or around 45 percent, will cast ballots this cycle.
“I hope I’m wrong,” Galvin said of his estimate.
If his projection tracks, voter participation would be down sharply from the 60 percent turnout in the last midterm and gubernatorial election in 2018, and that’s despite the addition of mail-in voting options that were not in place for the election four years ago and are designed to boost turnout.
It would also ebb to a low water mark for general election turnout in Massachusetts, for more than 74 years, according to online data from the secretary’s office that dates back to 1948.
More than 960,000 Bay Staters have already voted, either by mailing in their ballot or voting early in person, pinning current voter turnout at 19.8 percent as of 9 a.m. Monday, according to an update from Galvin’s office.
Although voters will select a new governor and at least three other statewide officials, Galvin said that “there seems to be almost an anti-climactic attitude towards this election” and that it was lacking “tremendous enthusiasm,” with the exception of a handful of heated district races and the four ballot questions appearing before voters.
As voters sift through “contradictory and expensive” advertising messages around some of those questions and decide which bubble to fill in, Galvin called this cycle less of a midterm election and more of a “midterm exam.”
Hot button topics like taxes and immigration play into this year’s set of questions, which provide a direct way for voters to weigh in on specific issues — but they have to decode them first.
“I can tell you myself, not only has my office received more questions about the questions, but if I walk down the street, people want to know, ‘What about Question 1? Do you — ‘ And, you know, I haven’t gotten into details because I’m not actively involved in the campaigns,” the Brighton Democrat said.
He added, “If there’s any momentum behind going out to vote tomorrow, above everything else, it’s the questions.”
Galvin referred voters to summaries of the four questions, published in print and online by his office, for more information about the measures to impose a surtax on household incomes over $1 million, further regulate dental insurers, alter the state’s alcohol licensing laws, and decide whether to uphold a new law that will make driver’s licenses available to immigrants without legal status.
Because of the questions’ verbiage, which in some municipalities are translated into multiple languages, Galvin said voters should be “quite careful” to flip over the ballot in case some questions spill onto the reverse side in their city or town.
Voting will begin at 7 a.m., and polls close at 8 p.m.
Material from the State House News Service was used in this report. Charlie McKenna can be reached at [email protected].