RhodesCook.com

The Massachusetts Senate primary Dec. 8 did not anoint a new senator to succeed the late Edward M. Kennedy (and his temporary replacement, Paul Kirk). But there was nothing in the results that would point to anything but a Democratic special election victory Jan. 19.

Turnout for the Democratic primary in this heavily Democratic state was more than four times as large as for its Republican counterpart. And while pundits tended to dismiss the Democratic turnout as tepid, it was really not bad at all when compared to recent Senate nominating races in Massachusetts and even high-profile presidential primaries.

To be sure, the roughly 665,000 voters who cast ballots in Tuesday’s Democratic Senate primary represented barely half the number who voted in Massachusetts early last year in the extraordinary contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But turnout for the Democratic Senate primary was higher than the party’s two other presidential primaries this decade, including that in 2004 when Massachusetts’ own John Kerry was on the ballot.

The Democrat who won the Senate nomination this week, state Attorney General Martha Coakley, showed strong vote-getting appeal across the state. In a four-way race, she took nearly half the vote, and outside runner-up Michael Capuano’s Boston-area congressional district, she swept all but a handful of cities and towns.

Coakley carried cities such as Springfield and Worcester, old industrial centers such as Fall River and Lowell, suburbs such as Brookline and Newton, academic towns such as Northampton (Smith College) and Williamstown (Williams College), plus the gay-friendly community of Provincetown on the tip of Cape Cod.  

Her Republican opponent next month, state Sen. Scott Brown, was also a big winner on the GOP side. But in a state that has not elected a Republican senator since 1972, the most realistic goal for Brown would be just to run close to Coakley in next month’s special election. That by itself would be a considerable feat, since over the last 37 years only GOP Gov. William Weld in 1996 has come within 10 percentage points of the Democratic Senate victor. 

To read more stories on the Senate primary in Massachusetts visit www.boston.com.