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In Bristol County, the third time was nearly the charm for Donald Trump.
As the South Coast continued a rightward drift in presidential elections, Trump did better in Bristol County in 2024 than in any other Massachusetts county. Trump won 48% of the Bristol vote, compared with 36% in the state as a whole.
That was the former president’s strongest Bristol showing yet out of his three presidential runs.
2024 in Review
The conservative wave also hit a neighboring state Senate district. A Republican from Taunton flipped an open seat that had been held by the same Taunton Democrat since 1993. Otherwise, Democrats held ground in two open-seat House races, although the 8th Bristol District was decided between two Westport contenders by fewer than 300 votes.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren won a third term, turning back a challenge from Republican John Deaton, a lawyer and former U.S. Marine from Bolton who had strong backing from cryptocurrency investors.
Warren won 60% of the vote, the same share of the ballots she won in beating a Republican and an unenrolled candidate in 2018, and six points better than her showing in beating Republican Sen. Scott Brown in 2012.
Inflation, immigration drive rightward move
Of 14 Massachusetts counties, Bristol County gave Trump his best showing, with 48% of the vote, followed by Plymouth and Hampden with 44%, and Worcester with 43%. Trump won only 36% of the vote statewide. His worst numbers were in the left-leaning Suffolk County, including Boston, where he garnered 22% of the votes.
Judging from interviews at polling places in Bristol County, inflation and immigration seemed uppermost in the minds of voters who cast ballots for Trump, who won 11 of 20 Bristol County communities.
The twice-impeached convicted felon won the six right-leaning towns where he also prevailed in 2016 and 2020, including Swansea and Rehoboth, and he also won in four communities for the first time, including Fall River, long considered a Democratic stronghold.
Trump’s Bristol vote has grown with each run. Against former Secretary of State and U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton in 2016, he won 42%. Against President Joe Biden in 2020, he won 43%. The rightward shift in Bristol presidential voting compared with the rest of the state started in 2008.
A turn in the Senate
Bristol County’s conservative towns helped put Republican Kelly Dooner over the top in beating an establishment-supported Democrat, Joe Pacheco, to flip the state Senate seat in the Third Bristol & Plymouth District long held by Sen. Marc Pacheco. (The two men are not blood relations.)
Dooner, a member of the Taunton City Council and Planning Board, campaigned against what she called excessive state spending, with focus on the state’s allocations for emergency shelter for migrants. She pledged to work on revising the state’s right-to-shelter law and stop the state from paying benefits for people who are not in the country legally.
Dooner won five of the six Bristol County communities. Dooner and Pacheco, a longtime member of the Raynham Board of Selectmen, evenly split the four towns in Plymouth County.
Dooner won the race with just under a 2% edge.
Open House seats hold
Democrats held the House seats left open by the retirements of Rep. William Straus of Mattapoisett and Rep. Paul Schmid of Westport.
In the 10th Bristol District, Mark Sylvia, the former state undersecretary of energy and Fairhaven’s current town moderator, won the race to succeed Straus. Sylvia defeated Joe Pires, of Rochester, a small business manager and member of the Old Rochester Regional District School Committee.
That race turned out to be closer than Sylvia’s campaign expected. The final official tally was 53% for Sylvia, 47% for Pires.
In the 8th Bristol District, Democrat Steve Ouellette beat Republican Christopher Thrasher and three unenrolled contenders to succeed Schmid.
A member of the Westport Select Board, Ouellette topped Thrasher, a political consultant who made it onto the ballot in an 11th-hour write-in campaign.
According to official results, Ouellette’s margin was 1%, all of 261 votes.
2024: The year in review
The Light’s reporters dig into the top stories of 2024, noting what the developments could mean for the coming year.
- Thursday, Dec. 26: Grace Ferguson examines the housing crisis and New Bedford’s response to the critical need for affordable shelter.
- Friday, Dec. 27: Columnist Jack Spillane revisits the Club Madeirense S.S. Sacramento’s vote to allow female “festeiras” after more than a century of excluding women from planning roles.
- Monday, Dec. 30: Anastasia E. Lennon details the triumphs and setbacks in the offshore wind industry.
- Tuesday, Dec. 31: Education reporter Colin Hogan digs into the top developments in public schools and higher education.
- Wednesday, Jan. 1: Reporter Arthur Hirsch notes the changes voters brought, from new state legislators to President Donald Trump’s second term.
- Thursday, Jan. 2: Environmental reporter Adam Goldstein chronicles the effects of climate change and environmental developments in 2024.
Email reporter Arthur Hirsch at ahirsch@newbedfordlight.org.
My opinion, a more appropriate title to this essay would be, “Southcoast Exhibits ‘Irrational Exuberance’ “, to steal a line from Alan Greenspan. Now only time will tell, I’ll give it two years!
Bristol County is rather depressed and stagnant economically. For the most part it’s not a highly educated or affluent region and it’s heavily white. On those counts it has more in common with deep red states than the Massachusetts inside of 495. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that there’s a lot of misplaced resentment and a fundamental lack of understanding of the policy debates of the recent campaign cycle and their implications for families, businesses and local communities.
Nonsense.
New Bedford is one of the highest non-White population cities in the state.