Organizers behind the failed ballot question to move Massachusetts to an all-party primary system said Wednesday their bid was blunted by effective attacks from the political establishment late in the race.

Democracy “renovation” nonprofit Partners in Democracy held a briefing Wednesday, and while many speakers preferred to focus on the success of two other questions its coalition supported (Question 1 to expand public records law to the Legislature and governor, and Question 4 for Election Day voter registration), the failure of Question 3 dominated the discussion.

With 94% of votes counted, Associated Press results showed the “no” side with 61.1% to the “yes” camp’s 38.9%. As of about 3 p.m. Wednesday, more than 963,000 votes had been counted in support of the all-party primary idea while more than 1.5 million were opposed.

The results in the 30 communities of Franklin County and the North Quabbin region for Question 3 are nearly identical to the numbers for the state as a whole, with 61.7% of residents voting “no.” Only one town, Petersham, supported the measure, with 55.8% of residents backing Question 3 (594-470).

“We knew from the start that the race was against the status quo. There is nothing harder than actually going right at the core of the system that lets the status quo do its thing. And the fact that nearly a million people were ready to stand up and put their hands up and say, ‘Yes, I want this,’ even in the face of what was at the end of the day a pretty assertive, aggressive onslaught from the opposition, that means a lot,” said Danielle Allen, who chaired the Coalition for Healthy Democracy behind the proposal. 

Allen and others did not commit to pursuing the idea of an all-party primary system in the future (proposals substantially similar to failed ballot questions are barred from the ballot for the next two election cycles), but she did say “there will be another chapter” once the coalition figures out “what the shape of the chapter is.”

Dustin Cathcart, volunteer state leader for Veterans for All Voters, said he saw four primary causes for the defeat of Question 3: a national partisan wave that benefited Democrats and “increased partisanship,” the “cues” sent to  voters by virtue of both major political parties opposing the question, undecided voters who broke late to the “no” side, and the way the opposition used money against Question 3’s deep-pocketed backers.

“We out-raised the ‘no’ campaign, I think, by a factor of 25 to one. And so we had a lot of resources to bring to the fight, but that gap became their main message,” he said. Cathcart added, “We were polling ahead the entire time. There was a lot of undecideds, and it looks to me that a lot of the undecideds broke ‘no’ sort of toward the end of the campaign.”

Allen pushed back on Cathcart’s partisanship point and argued the real dynamic in the contest was “insiders versus outsiders.” But she had a similar take on how late-deciding voters sealed the question’s fate.

“The polling, if you really pull it apart [and] take a look at it, you’ll see that people pull together strong yeses and leaners, … and so I think the yes poll numbers leading up to the election had, you know, let’s call them more soft yeses … than might have been apparent,” she said. “And those soft yeses would have held all the way through Election Day had there not been a very, a sort of strong establishment opposition attack on the initiative. Under the pressure of that, some of those folks who were in the more soft yes category, you know, clearly reverted to the other position.”

Jordan Berg Powers, chair of Voter Rights MA that opposed Question 3, thanked voters Tuesday night for “preserving our democracy and leaving the power in the hands of the people.”

Sparked by a reporter’s question, Allen acknowledged Wednesday that she had been mulling the relationship between the 2020 failure of a ballot question that would have imposed ranked-choice voting and Question 3’s defeat Tuesday.

“I think for me, the answer is the dynamics depend on how the reform intersects with the patterns and structures of entrenched power. So, the RCV reform left party primaries intact,” Allen said, noting that Republicans including Gov. Charlie Baker opposed the idea while the “Democratic establishment was all sort of, on paper, on board.” 

Allen added, “This measure was instead going after the primary structure as such, right? So in that regard, then you have sort of both parties that desire to work against it. So I think that’s actually what you have to look at if you want to compare reforms: is sort of which aspect of the power structure do they actually touch? Then you’ll understand the dynamics that unfold from there.”

Supporters of an all-party primary system said it would increase competition and force candidates to try to appeal to a wider spectrum of voters; opponents said private equity interests helped bankroll the campaign and alleged the system would create an advantage for candidates with more money to spend. 

Johnny Depin contributed reporting.