by Dakota Antelman
When Hudson voters head to the polls for the Massachusetts Democratic and Republican presidential primary elections on Tuesday, recent polls suggest they may break with trends set in the 2008 and 2012 elections.
A Suffolk University Poll released on Sunday projects Republican businessman Donald Trump to win Massachusetts as a whole by nearly 20 percentage points. Trump has won every state that has voted this year except for Iowa and has maintained his lead over rivals Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz even as the once crowded field of Republican candidates has thinned. A different Suffolk University Poll released on Monday gives Democrat Hillary Clinton a 9% lead over her key liberal opponent, Bernie Sanders.
A win for Trump would reflect a change in loyalties among Republican voters in Massachusetts and, closer to home, in Hudson. On the contrary, a Clinton victory would mark the second time in the past eight years that the former Secretary of State has won Massachusetts.
Records of how each of Hudson’s seven precincts have voted in the past two presidential elections helps illustrate presidential politics inside Hudson, while also helping to contextualize the potentially historic upcoming 2016 primary.
Hillary Clinton won Hudson and won Massachusetts in 2008. When that year’s primary ballots were cast, Clinton remained in a neck-and-neck race with Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, an honor Obama eventually won.
Clinton dominated in towns across the state, winning handily in Hudson and eventually beating Obama 56% to 41% state-wide.
Mitt Romney won Massachusetts’ Republican primary, beating eventual party nominee John McCain 51% to 41%. Likewise, Romney, who was governor in Massachusetts in the early 2000s, won Hudson. Nevertheless, Romney suspended his campaign in the weeks following the Massachusetts Primary as McCain began to cement himself as the Republican favorite.
2008’s results in Hudson represented a base of Republicans and Democrats with intense loyalty to their party’s “establishment” candidates. In 2008, both Clinton and Romney were seasoned politicians with power within their own parties.
In 2012, Barack Obama ran an unopposed primary campaign as he hoped to extend his presidency through another term. He won Hudson with little voter turnout.
In the jam-packed Republican race, Mitt Romney won Massachusetts for the second straight election cycle. He won Hudson’s votes by a wide margin, beating Ron Paul and Rick Santorum by nearly 1000 votes each. Though his margin of victory in Massachusetts as a whole was smaller, Romney soon coasted to the Republican nomination and eventually lost to Barack Obama in the general election.
Voter turnout among Democrats was understandably low in the 2012 primary with no challengers to Obama within his party. On the Republican side, though Romney eventually won, the small groups of anti-establishment Republicans that sprung up early in that election season were beginning to gain momentum. That brought nearly 1,400 Republicans to Hudson polling stations that year. Tea Party figurehead Michele Bachmann lingered through the primary season and gathered a handful of votes from Hudson. Ron Paul earned over 150 votes in Hudson that year as well following his work in 2008 to cultivate libertarianism within the Republican party.
Voter turnout is regularly low during primary elections. Only 339 Democrats and 1,383 Republicans cast ballots in 2012. In total, only 1,721 of Hudson’s 19,000 residents voted. Four years earlier, when both parties had contested primaries, only 5,821 Hudson residents voted in the primary election.
Polls for this year’s Democratic and Republican primary elections open at 7am Tuesday morning and close at 8pm Tuesday night.
