Hannah Bowen won the Massachusetts 6th Essex State Rep district by a much higher margin than Kamala Harris six months ago
On Tuesday, May 13 non-profit executive Hannah Bowen (D-Beverly) defeated digital marketing professional Medley Long III (R-Beverly) in a special election for the Sixth Essex State Representative district. Bowen will replace Jared Parisella (D-Beverly) who was appointed to a District Court judgeship by Governor Maura Healey.
Bowen’s victory was not a surprise given the D+18 Partisan Voter Index (PVI) rating of the Beverly-based Sixth Essex district, but her margin of 48 points was striking because it is 12 percentage points higher than Kamala Harris’s 35 point victory over Trump in the district.
Figure 1: Sixth Essex Democratic vote share difference - 2025 special vs. 2024 presidential
We can see by looking at the individual precinct-level results that Rep-Elect Bowen outperformed the Democratic presidential candidate in every precinct except Beverly Ward 6, Precinct 1, which happens to be the home precinct of Republican candidate Medley Long III. Bowen still won this precinct by a 20 point margin and achieved a remarkable 85% of the vote in two precincts, about 10 points higher than Harris in each.
| Precinct |
2025
|
2024
|
Margin Difference
|
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bowen (D) | Long (R) | Margin | Harris (D) | Trump (R) | Margin | |||
| Beverly 1-1 | 74% | 26% | 47 | 64% | 36% | 28 | 9 | |
| Beverly 1-2 | 73% | 27% | 46 | 66% | 34% | 31 | 7 | |
| Beverly 2-1 | 81% | 19% | 63 | 71% | 29% | 41 | 11 | |
| Beverly 2-2 | 85% | 15% | 71 | 75% | 25% | 50 | 10 | |
| Beverly 3-1 | 79% | 21% | 58 | 70% | 30% | 40 | 9 | |
| Beverly 3-2 | 73% | 27% | 45 | 63% | 37% | 26 | 9 | |
| Beverly 4-1 | 72% | 28% | 45 | 71% | 29% | 42 | 1 | |
| Beverly 4-2 | 85% | 15% | 69 | 76% | 24% | 53 | 8 | |
| Beverly 5-1 | 72% | 28% | 44 | 62% | 38% | 24 | 10 | |
| Beverly 5-2 | 74% | 26% | 48 | 64% | 36% | 28 | 10 | |
| Beverly 6-11 | 60% | 40% | 20 | 70% | 30% | 39 | −10 | |
| Beverly 6-2 | 64% | 36% | 28 | 62% | 38% | 24 | 2 | |
| Wenham 1 | 76% | 24% | 51 | 68% | 32% | 36 | 8 | |
| 1 Home precinct of GOP candidate Medley Long III | ||||||||
We can’t extrapolate too much from a single special election, but the results seem to show Democrats in a strong position as Donald Trump continues to take actions that anger a wide swath of Massachusetts voters, causing likely headwinds for Massachusetts GOP candidates.
There will be another special election test on June 10th in the Third Bristol district previously help by Representative Carol Doherty (D-Taunton) who died in February from pancreatic cancer. Lisa Field (D-Taunton) of the Massachusetts Nurses Association will face funeral home owner Lawrence Quintal (R-Taunton). The Third Bristol district is a swing district with a PVI of D+5. It was represented by Republican Shaunna O’Connell (R-Taunton) for ten years before she was elected Mayor of Taunton in 2020.