Nearly half of Mass. primary voters cast an early ballot

Fewer people may have walked out of school gyms with little "I voted" stickers, but there was a robust turnout for Tuesday's primary in Massachusetts.

More than 1.2 million Bay Staters voted in Tuesday's primary election, and nearly half of them didn't visit a polling station on Election Day. Absentee and early voters made up 48.2% of the electorate, according to Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin. Nearly all of their ballots were received by mail.

"There is little doubt that the availability of Vote by Mail ballots helped drive turnout in this primary," Galvin said in a statement released Thursday. "It is a testament to the success of our Vote by Mail program that nearly half of those who voted did so with a mail-in ballot."

Nearly two-thirds of Democrats (62.5%) opted for an early voting method, compared to a third of Republicans (32.3%). The two major parties represented the vast majority of votes cast in the primary, though a sizable number of Libertarians also pulled ballots.

In all, Tuesday was the second-biggest primary in Massachusetts Republican primary history, bested only by the race in 2016, according to Galvin. And for Democrats, it was the "highest in recent history in which an incumbent president was on the ballot," according to the statement.

While the robust voting figures may have been a surprise, the results were not.

Both President Biden and now-presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump continued to flatten the field, knocking out would-be contenders in their respective contests. Former Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley dropped out of the Republican primary on Wednesday, after winning just Vermont during Super Tuesday. Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips won even less on the Democratic side before bowing out Wednesday as well.