Last night was primary night in Massachusetts, as the voters of both parties went to the polls to select their candidates for the Senate special election -- being held to fill the seat that was vacated by Secretary of State John Kerry.
For the Democrats, it was a race between progressive Rep. Ed Markey and the more conservative Rep. Stephen Lynch. Markey had led in all the polls, and coasted to a pretty easy win -- getting more than 300,000 votes. On the Republican side, the winner was private equity investor (Romney clone?) Gabriel Gomez -- who got slightly less than 100,000 votes. He was opposed by former U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan and state Rep. Daniel Winslow.
Here are the numbers with 99% of the vote in:
DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY
Ed Markey...............306,860 (58%)
Stephen Lynch...............226,253 (42%)
REPUBLICAN PRIMARY
Gabriel Gomez...............93,819 (51%)
Michael Sullivan...............66,302 (36%)
Daniel Winslow...............24,099 (13%)
Markey and Gomez will now meet in the June 25th special election, and the winner will become the junior senator from Massachusetts. Markey has to be considered the prohibitive favorite.