In the fall of 2002 yet another loss at the ballot box left many Democratic Party faithful scratching their heads in disbelief. Weld, Weld, Cellucci, Romney; 2002 marked the fourth consecutive election where a Republican candidate had defeated the Democrat in the race for Governor of Massachusetts. In a state where Democrats hold hefty margins in both the House and Senate, the message from voters could not be ignored. Does the Democratic Party do enough to inspire voters? READ THE FULL REPORT


This analysis focused on the voting patterns by city and town and on whether there were demographic variables identified in the 2000 U. S.
Census that would help to explain why the Democratic candidate received more or less votes in any given city or town. Mathematical techniques such as correlation analysis and regression analysis were both used to answer some of the questions. This subcommittee did not use polling data since a separate subcommittee was charged with looking at that data. READ THE FULL REPORT

We categorized testimony into a dozen political categories (another dozen issue-based categories are addressed later). The categories are all related to each other, but people testifying generally fall into three groups:

(A) those who believe the party should move further left;
(B) those who believe the party should move to the center; and
(C) those who believe the problem is in the process or gubernatorial candidate’s style.

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Turnout was the single most influencing factor, Lake said. Republican turnout was stronger than Democratic turnout last year, a surprising and unusual phenomenon for a mid-term election. READ THE FULL REPORT