CommonWealth Beacon Election Day insights

Happy Election Day, welcome to the CommonWealth Beacon somewhat live blog! I’m Jennifer Smith, one of the senior reporters here, and I’m helming this channel throughout the day as my colleagues head into the field. You’ll hear from them over the day, as well as other experts. If you want to send anything across my desk, I’ll be checking my email at jsmith at commonwealthbeacon.org.

2:15 pm · Jennifer Smith, senior reporter

Massachusetts early voting patterns seem to be transcending demographic categories, with one notable exception.

“The one that’s the best fit is education,” said MassINC Polling Group Vice President Rich Parr. “The more educated voters are in a given town, the most likely they were to use early voting.”

2:00 pm · Jennifer Smith, senior reporter

Secretary of State Bill Galvin, who is on the ballot himself and is championing ballot Question 4 on Election Day registration, declined to predict turnout this week.

“Now the national atmosphere is intensified, but are voters thinking in other directions?” Galvin said, comparing the current election to midterms in 2018 and 2022. “Are they frustrated? I don’t know. I wish I could say, ‘This is the number and that’s what’s going to be.’ I can’t be that confident.”

Ahead of Tuesday’s election where control of Congress is up for grabs, Galvin told reporters he thinks the election has become “a referendum on the economy, the direction of our nation and in fact the direction of the world.”

1:15 pm · Jennifer Smith, senior reporter

The Gateway Cities are lagging the state in early voting, said MassINC Polling Group Vice President Rich Parr, “which makes sense because they lag in overall turnout as well.”

CommonWealth Beacon’s Gateway Cities reporter, Hallie Claflin, said she’ll be keeping an eye on turnout in the 26 cities:

I’ll be watching turnout closely on election night, especially in low-income cities like Lawrence, where both the mayor and a state representative were arrested and charged with fraud and money laundering this summer. Voter registration reports filed by Secretary of State Bill Galvin’s office show that more than 50,000 people are registered to vote in Lawrence this election, the highest that number has been in well over a decade. Will Lawrence residents skip the polls today, or are voters fed up with the status quo and feeling more empowered than ever to make their voices heard this election cycle? We will soon find out.

1:00 pm · Jennifer Smith, senior reporter

Early voting trends can offer some cues nationally, said MassINC Polling Group Vice President Rich Parr. Democrats tend to outperform Republicans on early voting, so the question is whether Republicans can make up the gap.

In Massachusetts, the partisan spread in early voting isn’t always informative because the races tend to be so lopsidedly Democrat, he noted. Overall, early voting in the Bay State is pretty close to the levels in 2022, Parr said — around 1.1 million early votes, or about a fifth of registered voters.

“The composition of it is changing, but it’s not necessarily that more people are doing it,” Parr said of early voting in the state. In-person early voting is up by about 84 percent compared to the 2022 midterms, and mail-in early voting is down about 4 percent.

12:45 pm · Jennifer Smith, senior reporter

Most of the nine questions are near coin-flips based on the polling. Voters are leaning toward close but comfortable yeses on Question 2 and Question 4, which would respectively let employees of the state public defender agency unionize and usher in Election Day voter registration.

The rest are hovering around or below 50 percent support, which pollsters find is a dangerous place to be heading into the election. These include the politically fraught efforts to move state primaries to an all-party system through Question 3 and Question 5’s esoteric but meaningful play to adjust the way a state tax cap law triggers refunds to taxpayers.

12:30 pm · Jennifer Smith, senior reporter

Two efforts to roll back existing laws look like they are in serious trouble at the booth. Question 8 would dismantle the state’s recreational cannabis industry and Question 9 would repeal a recently passed firearms law.

The bid to undo the recreational cannabis law approved by ballot measure just 10 years ago is now the most expensive question of the cycle, with almost all of the money behind the effort coming from SAM Action Inc., a Virginia-based nonprofit that exists primarily to oppose the recreational marijuana industry. Polling heading into Election Day found residents deeply skeptical about the measure, with support stuck in the low 30s at best.

Nor do they seem eager to toss the sweeping 2024 firearms law, which expanded restrictions on who can carry what firearms, and where. This is a repeal referendum, which means a “no” vote repeals the law, and polled support for the repeal has been hovering around the same level as undoing the recreational cannabis system: 31 percent or lower.

11:45 am · Jennifer Smith, senior reporter

The ballot question that looks most likely to become law (with all the caveats that nothing is over until it’s over) is Question 1, which would make the Legislature and governor’s office subject to public records law. Polling throughout the fall found a healthy majority (between 63 and 84 percent depending on the poll) of respondents expected to vote yes.

It is widely regarded as the heir to State Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s ballot measure last cycle that explicitly authorized her to audit the Legislature, and is one of two measures where lawmakers have potential legislation queued up that could undercut it if the question passes.

11:30 am · Jennifer Smith, senior reporter

With Election Day underway, it’s direct democracy pulling the most focus here in the Bay State. Voters are deciding the fate of nine ballot questions on policy areas ranging from an obscure tax cap law, to public records access, to zoning reform, to conservation funding.

If you’re still cramming for the ballot box test, we have you covered with a guide to all nine questions.