Just for fun, I took a crude map of Massachusetts and drew in the 2002 election returns in a style similar to the Purple America map that was floating around after the November election. I wanted to have a clear picture of where the Democrats where weak that year. It turns out that they were weak pretty much everywhere east of Springfield, apart from Boston. Take a look:
Romney vs. O'Brien 2002
Click on the map for a bigger version of the same. From the map, it's clear that O'Brien was strong in Berkshire, Hampshire and Franklin counties (where nobody lives) as well as Suffolk county (which is bigger than the other three combined). Romney was strongest in Worcester, Plymouth, Essex, Norfolk and Barnstable, though he won all the rest of Massachusetts as well.
Compare that showing with the 2004 election:
Bush vs. Kerry 2004
Now, as the UMass poll indicated, the people of Massachusetts draw a distiction between who they want as President and who they want as Governor. Still, the contrast is stark. Kerry won every county, but you can still see the purple areas of this map correspond to the reddest areas of the 2002 map. This suggests to me the ceiling that any Democratic candidate for office can be expected to reach in Massachusetts when running against a credible challenger. If the Democrats can leverage their Kerry turnout organization, they could overwhelm Romney no matter who the candidate is. Of course, getting every Kerry voter to a) come out in '06 and b) vote for the Democrat is a bit of wishful thinking. Even so, support for Democrats in general is high in Massachusetts and if the party gives the voters a compelling reason to discard their preference for divided government, Romney could be in trouble.
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