Stewart “Buz” Eisenberg, town moderator and a ballot counter in Ashfield, didn’t arrive home from counting ballots with his wife, also a ballot counter, until 1:30 a.m. on Wednesday — despite living five minutes away from Ashfield Town Hall.
The five and a half hours of counting after the 8 p.m. close of polls was made all the more lengthy amid a roughly 73% voter turnout in Ashfield, where 1,069 of the town’s 1,471 registered voters cast their ballots.
“I’ve seen a lot of midterms, I’ve seen a lot of presidential elections, and this is one of the best [turnouts] we’ve seen,” said Eisenberg, a professor emeritus at Greenfield Community College who taught political science. “[We] had 73% voter turnout for a midterm, which is extremely high. I can’t say if it’s the highest ever … but we can say it’s really high. We were very pleased about that.”
Of the 26 municipalities in Franklin County and the North Quabbin region that have reported voter turnout to the Greenfield Recorder, only two saw voter turnout of less than 50% in Tuesday’s midterm elections: Orange and Athol (42.9% and 42%, respectively).
In the county seat of Greenfield, 54.8% of registered voters headed to the polls. The average rate of registered voter turnout across the 26 municipalities that submitted numbers for Franklin County and the North Quabbin region was 65.07%.
“I can remember years where we had 25, 30% turnout during midterms where it was sort of a ho-hum,” Eisenberg said. “I’m extremely pleased. There are so many concerns that democracy is in peril these days, and nothing can sort of pick us up in that regard more than the large voter turnout we had in Ashfield.”
Ray La Raja, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and co-director of the UMass Poll, said that this average for the municipalities was “pretty good” when comparing it to voter turnout during past midterms.
This rate of voter turnout in Franklin County and the North Quabbin region for a midterm election is slightly higher than what has historically been the case for Massachusetts. Excluding 2018, which was the first midterm under President Donald Trump, one would have to go back to 1994 to find a year where local voter turnout for a midterm election was higher than it was this year, according to information from the Secretary of State’s Office.
“Much higher turnout,” La Raja said when comparing 2026 to 2022. “I think it’s a combination of just wanting to express enthusiasm for being part of the election, and the ballot issues brought people to the polls.”
In the 1994 midterms, which proved to be a red wave for Republicans in response to President Bill Clinton, 70.79% of registered voters in Massachusetts cast a ballot. The 2026 midterms ended up being a blue wave for Democrats, with that political party projected to hold sizeable majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Historically, voter turnout reaches a crescendo when the sitting president has low approval ratings. Over the past 20 years, the two midterms that saw the highest voter participation were in 2006 and 2018, when 56.23% and 60.17% of registered voters across Massachusetts submitted a ballot, respectively. Former President George W. Bush entered the 2006 midterm elections with roughly 38% job approval, while Trump came into the 2018 midterm with just around 40% job approval.
Trump entered the 2026 midterm elections with roughly 37% job approval.
“We’ve noticed a real spike in participation. People’s interest is really elevated since Trump first came on the scene in 2015,” Eisenberg said. “The other things is … it was a big ballot. We had nine ballot questions in addition to all the [candidates] that were running. I think that that also helped drive participation.”
Eisenberg added that this was one of the most well-informed crops of voters that he’s seen. With nine ballot questions, Eisenberg said he knows that a lot of his friends brought cheat sheets to the polls, reminding them of their stances on each one.
“The ballot questions were questions that people had to prepare [for],” Eisenberg said. “It’s not just that they showed up; it’s also that they were prepared. They really thought about the ballot questions and they really thought about the candidates. … It seemed to me that this was a particularly well-prepared electorate.”
Franklin County and the North Quabbin region followed similar trends to the state at large when it came to voting on the ballot initiatives. Questions 5 and 7, pertaining to the formula Massachusetts uses to cap state tax revenue and the minimum size required for residential building lots, respectively, had the tightest margins between “yes” and “no” votes locally. The question that had the biggest discrepancy between the regional opinion and how the state as a whole voted was Question 9 that sought to repeal the 2024 gun law, with 59.3% of local residents voting “yes” compared to roughly 67% statewide.
“The thing that drives a lot of people, is that there’s something that has to be determined on the ballot, and so they come out and vote,” La Raja said. “[Questions 5 and 7] draw a lot of interest. … There’s some other issues there that we know are going to pass, [like] keeping the commercial sale of marijuana [through Question 8], but people might want to make sure that continued.
“Franklin County has some hunters, too. … [Questions 8 and 9] are big, kind of culture war issues that people might have come out for,” La Raja continued.
With no competitive statewide races, La Raja pins the high voter turnout to the fact that Massachusetts, as a whole, is one of the most educated states in the country.
“I think what’s always remarkable to me is how high turnout is in Massachusetts, even though our races aren’t very competitive,” La Raja said. “We’re not Wisconsin, we’re not Michigan, and I think a lot of it has to do with, we have a highly educated state that feels it’s their civic duty to turn out, and you’re seeing some of that in Franklin County.”
