1970 United States Senate election in Massachusetts

The 1970 United States Senate election in Massachusetts was held on November 3, 1970. The incumbent Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy defeated his challengers. This was Kennedy's first election run since the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident. Kennedy won 62.2% of the vote, down from the 74.3% that he won in the previous election in 1964, indicating that Chappaquiddick did affect his popularity.

1970 United States Senate election in Massachusetts
November 3, 1970
 
Nominee Ted Kennedy Josiah Spaulding
Party Democratic Republican
Popular vote 1,202,856 715,978
Percentage 62.2% 37.0%
Municipal results
U.S. senator before election

Ted Kennedy
Democratic

 Elected U.S. Senator

Ted Kennedy
Democratic

Elections in Massachusetts

This was the last election in which Ted Kennedy lost any Massachusetts county. Spaulding carried Barnstable, Dukes, Franklin, and Nantucket Counties.

Republican primary

Candidates

Results
Republican primary[2]
Party Candidate Votes % ±
Republican Josiah Spaulding 109,306 57.32
Republican John J. McCarthy 81,356 42.66

General election

Candidates
  • Ted Kennedy (Democratic) - incumbent U.S. Senator first elected in 1962 (to John Kennedy's unexpired term) and elected to a full term in 1964
  • Lawrence Gilfedder (Socialist Labor)
  • Mark R. Shaw (Prohibition) - Former Prohibition Party candidate for U.S. Senator from Massachusetts in 1946, 1952, 1958, 1969, 1962, and 1966. He was the party's candidate for governor of Massachusetts in 1948 and 1956. In 1964, he was the Prohibition Party's candidate for vice president of the United States.[3]
  • Josiah Spaulding (Republican) - businessman

Results
Results by county
  Republican >= 50%
  Democrat >= 50%
  Democrat >= 60%
  Democrat >= 70%
General election
Party Candidate Votes % ±
Democratic Edward M. Kennedy (incumbent) 1,202,856 62.16% 12.1
Republican Josiah Spaulding 715,978 37.00% 11.58
Socialist Labor Lawrence Gilfedder 10,378 0.54% 0.33
Prohibition Mark R. Shaw 5,944 0.31% 0.19
gollark: It *may* also have been retroactively self-causing.
gollark: I suspect it came from the human collective unconsciousness itself.
gollark: PotatOS™ originally came to me in a dream, and the code simply flowed from my fingers with no conscious intervention.
gollark: It's my name on the commits, and I typed out the code, but I didn't *design* potatOS, or create it.
gollark: I didn't "create" potatOS. I am merely a conduit.

See also
  • United States Senate elections, 1970

References
  1. Josiah Spaulding at ourcampaigns.com
  2. http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=349912
  3. Mark R. Shaw at ourcampaigns.com
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.