“This is a very clear race between two candidates who are nothing alike,” Tyler Hack, a trans rights organizer and the founder of Christopher Street Project, told the Globe. “Had this been a race between Ed Markey and Ed Markey a little bit younger, I don’t know how it would be going. But it’s not.”
By Sam Brodey and Kelly Garrity | August 31, 2026
The outcome of Massachusetts’ Democratic Senate primary, which winds to a close on Tuesday, may hinge on whether it’s hit with a late injection of something the race has so far lacked.
Urgency.
Since the beginning of the race, Democratic voters have largely been tuned out of the contest between incumbent Senator Ed Markey, of Malden, and challenger Seth Moulton, the congressman from Salem.
The choices haven’t exactly galvanized primary voters. In a moment of generational upheaval for Democrats, many have been uneasy about sending the 80-year old Markey back to Washington for another six-year term. But they also seem unconvinced that Moulton will be the rock-solid progressive they want — even though there is not much daylight between the two contenders on policy.
The stakes haven’t galvanized, either. With Democrats desperate to counter Trump in the Senate by defeating Republicans elsewhere in the midterms, the importance of a blue-state primary has seemed comparatively minor.
Both candidates have been making their cases around the state. As Markey bets it all on consolidating the most engaged of the core party base, Moulton is counting on a groundswell of support from outside the usual corners — which would require generating strong voter turnout.
That’s where the sense of urgency comes in — a feeling Moulton and his team were working hard to generate at his final big pre-primary rally on Saturday afternoon. On a sun-drenched Lynn Common, Moulton mingled with voters and families alongside big banners with his closing slogan: “Our fight can’t wait.”
Asked by the Globe if voters see the same need for change he does, Moulton said, “it’s what I hear all over the place.”
“I was just walking around Wakefield,” Moulton said. “I couldn’t take 10 steps without someone coming up to me and saying, ‘hey, thanks for being here, and thanks for running.’”
But some of Moulton’s biggest supporters worried about the relative apathy they’ve sensed among fellow Democrats.
Jenny Dworkin, a 56-year old supporter from Cambridge, told the Globe she wishes “I could light more of a fire” under fellow Democrats to get behind Moulton. She believes he’s best positioned to push for change in Massachusetts and beyond — noting his opposition to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York remaining as Democratic leader — but is “frustrated” others don’t feel it as strongly as she does.
“I’m surprised other people aren’t paying attention,” she said at Moulton’s rally in Lynn. “My neighbors are sending money to Texas.”
With voters set to go to the polls on Tuesday, the overall primary ennui may give Markey the upper hand. Both candidates spent Monday squeezing in their final stops before Election Day.
Moulton visited businesses in Boston’s Chinatown, West Roxbury, and Dorchester. At Bánh Mì Ba Lẹ & Bakery in Dorchester, Moulton, along with his wife, Liz, and two daughters, enjoyed a Vietnamese lunch of banh mi and noodles. “We’ll be all over the place,” he told reporters outside. “We’re working hard.”
Markey swung by Gracie’s Ice Cream in Somerville for a scoop of brownie mint chip in a waffle cone and a couple of fist bumps with local children. Markey, who wore a pair of blue Air Jordan 1s, told reporters outside that he was “trying to earn every single vote of every single person in the Commonwealth.”
“I’m not stopping until 8 o’clock tomorrow night,” he said.
The Senate race is the most high-profile contest out of several on Tuesday that will test voters’ appetite for generational change.
In the Eighth Congressional District, longtime Representative Stephen Lynch, 71, is facing a challenge from 39-year old Patrick Roath. In the First District, in Western Massachusetts, 19-term Representative Richard E. Neal is opposed by another 39-year old newcomer, Jeromie Whalen. In Moulton’s Sixth District, meanwhile, five candidates are competing to succeed him.
Four polls out this month show Markey dominating Moulton by double digits; the closest margin, in a Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll released Aug. 18, showed Markey with a 14-percentage point lead. And with more than 400,000 Democratic primary ballots already cast through early and mail-in voting as of Friday, according to data from Secretary of State William F. Galvin’s office, both candidates have fewer voters left to win over.
Still, the incumbent didn’t appear to be taking the outcome for granted — and he tried to spin up some urgency on his side, too. Markey called in the progressive cavalry Saturday, tapping Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and Representative Ayanna Pressley to rally with him in Dorchester, a closing salvo meant to punctuate his campaign’s main message: that he, not Moulton, is the progressive choice in the race.
On Sunday, to a crowd of about 70 supporters who gathered at the same Arlington park where he had appeared late in the campaign amid his primary against former representative Joe Kennedy III six years ago, Markey tried to infuse the contest with a greater sense of gravitas.
“There’s a wave coming … in North Carolina, in Ohio, in Iowa,” Markey told the crowd, alluding to some of the battleground states where Democrats have hinged their hopes of taking control of the Senate. “And it begins here in Massachusetts Tuesday.”
Those listening gamely cheered and clapped along as Markey delivered his final pitch. But even some of them acknowledged the somewhat sleepy dynamic clouding the contest.
“I think this race is just not as intense as some of the others,” said Lisa Gurgone, 51, of Waltham.
Only one of three elected officials expected to appear alongside the senator ended up attending the Sunday event.
“In this era, this problematic era we’re living through, I do think that the incredible maelstrom of corruption and misinformation and negativity … may have dampened enthusiasm a little bit for politics overall,” state Representative David Rogers, a Democrat who represents Arlington, Belmont, and part of Cambridge, said.
Each candidate’s respective backers can agree on that point. Moulton’s events, however, are distinctly animated with exasperation not only over Markey’s decision to run again but a sense that many Democrats have seemed content to re-elect him because he is perceived as more progressive.
Will Reichelt, the mayor of West Springfield and a Moulton endorser, argued Markey is “the same candidate as six years ago,” when he successfully made his race against Kennedy a referendum on who was more progressive. “Like, nothing’s really changed,” he told the Globe after introducing Moulton at an event on Sunday.
In this contentious primary cycle for Democrats, however, voters have judged candidates less on ideology and more on their zeal and capability in fighting Trump and Republicans.
That energy was apparent when Moulton spoke to a few dozen supporters at a canvassing launch in a Worcester union hall on Sunday afternoon. One attendee, retired Shrewsbury pediatrician Marianne Felice, asked Moulton a blunt question.
“For the first time in my life, I’m embarrassed to be a Democrat,” she said. Referring to Moulton’s Democratic colleagues, she asked him, “are they scared? I mean, are they afraid of Trump?”
“I try to be respectful of other Democrats, but I get this question a lot,” Moulton responded.
The strength of that sentiment among Democrats has often boosted younger candidates elsewhere who challenged entrenched veterans — but the dynamic has not factored as much into this race as might have been expected.
Moulton has taken shots at Markey for certain votes to confirm Trump nominees to argue he’s no longer an effective fighter, though he always ties the point to his broader pitch about generational change.
“That’s why it’s time for a change,” Moulton said in Worcester. “And a new generation of leaders is saying, ‘no, we’re going to take the fight to these guys, and we are going to win.’”
But Markey in turn has painted himself as the person best positioned to take on the Republican president. In Arlington Sunday, he promised to fight the administration “insistently, persistently, [and] consistently,” while railing against ICE, the war in Iran, and Attorney General Todd Blanche.
While his supporters concede that age may be a factor in a candidate’s ability to serve effectively, Markey, they argue, isn’t showing signs of slowing down — and his record is more in line with the Democratic diehards that tend to turn out in primaries in Massachusetts.
“This is a very clear race between two candidates who are nothing alike,” Tyler Hack, a trans rights organizer and the founder of Christopher Street Project, said. “Had this been a race between Ed Markey and Ed Markey a little bit younger, I don’t know how it would be going. But it’s not.”
