Among all 50 states, Massachusetts stands out remarkably in the percentage of registered independent voters.
Despite its Democratic-leaning tendency, 62% of voters in Massachusetts are registered as independents as of November 2023, surpassing both major political parties. The voter registration ratio sees Democrats outnumbering Republicans by 3 to 1; nearly 30% of voters are registered Democrats, while only 9% are Republicans.
“We have a lot of very liberal people, but the voters statewide are not as, you know, they’re not lefty, lefties the way some magazines make it out to be. You can win statewide if you’re a moderate Republican in Massachusetts,” Ray La Raja, a University of Massachusetts Amherst political science professor and co-director of the UMass Amherst Poll, explained.
What leads Massachusetts, with its Democratic supermajorities and non-swing state status, to have such a high number of independents? The answers might lie in semi-open primaries and automatic voter registration.
Steve Koczela, president of MassINC Polling Group, pointed out that automatic voter registration, adopted in 2018, registers residents when they engage with state government services, such as the Department of Motor Vehicles. People are automatically enrolled as “unenrolled” or independent voters, requiring them to take additional steps, such as visiting a party’s website or an office, to register with a specific party.
This additional process potentially discourages party registration, particularly as Massachusetts holds semi-open primaries, allowing voters flexibility without party commitment.
“There’s no penalty for being an independent. In fact, there’s a benefit, because you can vote either primary and vice versa,” La Raja noted.
The increase in automatic voter registration has shifted Massachusetts independents to lean more left, not necessarily altering their attitudes but expanding their numbers without affecting Democratic office winners’ margins significantly.
“It used to be essentially that Republicans almost always would win the unenrolled voters,” Koczela stated. “But now that there’s so few people enrolled in either party, it is that there are more Democrats entering on a broad category or more Democratic-leaning voters entering that unenrolled category.”
Despite the independent majority, Massachusetts remains predominantly Democratic.
“Now, Massachusetts, politically it has not moved at all to the right, you know, no decrease in Democratic sentiment,” Koczela said. “In Massachusetts, it’s just the mechanics of registering to vote that have caused a huge increase in unenrolled voters.”
Democrats enjoy supermajorities in both legislative chambers of Massachusetts — the House (135-24) and the Senate (36-4). Although the current governor, Maura Healey, is a Democrat, the state has had a history of Republican governors, such as former Govs. Charlie Baker and Mitt Romney, which some attribute to the high numbers of independents and the state’s center-left voting history.
The Republicans have maintained control of the governor’s office for most of the past three decades, even as progressives like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) have won congressional races.
“We are open to Republican managers and Democratic activists for Congress,” David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, told the Boston Globe. “Underneath that umbrella of 60%, there’s a method to the madness.”
Thus, Massachusetts independents might not truly be independent in their voting behavior but rather reflect a convenient statistic. Nevertheless, Massachusetts might be more centrist than generally perceived.
“We do vote for a lot of Democrats, but a lot of the Democrats who we vote for here aren’t super liberal. The policy that comes out of them is often quite, sort of center to center-left,” Koczela commented.
“Reading the politics of being super lefty, I think, is wrong. I think that [being center-left] has more to do with why we’ve ended up with these Republican governors rather than independents. Because if it were independents, then you’d have people who would be more willing to look at Republican members of Congress and we haven’t had one of those decades,” Koczela continued.
