Markey's District Comes Through

U.S. Rep. Ed Markey's victory over U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch in the Democratic Senate primary was sweeping — 57 to 43 percent.

He won Boston and did well in some conservative parts of the state Lynch had to win: on the Cape, in parts of Middlesex and Essex counties and in the Springfield suburbs.

But equally important were the big margins Markey racked up in his district, which stretches through the suburbs north and west of Boston.

He won Framingham 72 to 28 percent, Arlington 77 to 23 percent and Lincoln 92 to 8 percent.

Lynch piled up some big margins in his own district, too, winning Brockton 71 to 29 percent, for instance, and Stoughton 66 to 34 percent.

But Markey's home cooking may have been more impactful.

If Lynch was to pull off the upset over the more liberal Markey, he needed to produce something like the map Republican Scott Brown put together in his victory over Democrat Martha Coakley in the U.S. Senate special election three years ago.

The trouble for Lynch, when it came to his own district, is that Brown performed quite well there three years ago: not a whole lot of room to grow.

He did manage to grow Brown's totals in much of his district — in some cases, impressively so. Lynch outperformed Brown by 26 percent in Brockton and 23 percent in Quincy. But in most cases, the gains were measured in single digits or the low teens.

In four towns — Cohasset, Hingham, Scituate and Westwood — he underperformed Brown.

Markey, by contrast, had plenty of room to improve on Coakley's middling performance in his district. And improve he did.

He outperformed Coakley in every city and town in the district and often by big margins: 31 percent in Sudbury, 35 percent in Sherborn and 37 percent in Weston.

The margin topped 20 percent in almost half of the cities and towns in Markey's district.