Suffolk County, Massachusetts is a large and diverse region encompassing the cities of Boston, Chelsea, Revere, and Winthrop. It is governed by a seven-member Board of Supervisors and has its own administrative offices. The board is responsible for setting policy, overseeing tax collection and allocation, providing services to residents and businesses, and managing county resources. Suffolk County also has an elected Sheriff’s Department which provides law enforcement services throughout the county. The county is represented in Congress by four members of the House of Representatives as well as two senators in the U.S. Senate. There are several local political parties active in Suffolk County, including the Democratic Party, Republican Party, Green-Rainbow Party, Libertarian Party, Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts (PDM), Socialist Party USA (SPUSA) and Working Families Party (WFP). Each party holds their own primary elections prior to each general election in order to select their candidates for public office at the local level. All registered voters living in Suffolk County are eligible to vote in these primaries or participate in any other electoral process taking place within the county’s jurisdictions.
The political climate in Suffolk County, MA is very liberal.
In Suffolk County, MA 80.6% of the people voted Democrat in the last presidential election, 17.5% voted for the Republican Party, and the remaining 1.9% voted Independent.
In the last Presidential election, Suffolk county remained overwhelmingly Democratic, 80.6% to 17.5%.
Suffolk county voted Democratic in every Presidential election since 2000.
The BestPlaces liberal/conservative index
Suffolk County, MA is very liberal.
Boston-Cambridge-Newton Metro Area is very liberal.
Massachusetts is very liberal.
The BestPlaces liberal/conservative index is based on recent voting in national elections, federal campaign contributions by local residents, and consumer personality profiles.
VoteWord™
Displaying 20 years of Presidential voting, visualized in one word.
Suffolk, Massachusetts: D D D D D D
How It Works:
Here at BestPlaces, we were looking at the voting patterns since the 2000 election and realized that we could express the results of each election as one letter. R if the Republican Party candidate won, D for the Democrat and I for the Independent. The six elections (2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020) would be expressed as six-letter word (R R D R R).
Then we went a little further and added the dimension of magnitude. If the difference of victory was greater than 10 percent, the letter is upper case, and lower case if the difference was less than 10 percent. This allows us to see interesting voting patterns at just a glance.
Here's the VoteWord for Iowa d r d d r. In the last six elections the state has been closely contested, voting narrowly for the Republican Party candidate in 2016 and 2020 after voting for the Democratic Party in 2008 and 2012. Virginia (r r d d d D) has voted for the Democratic Party in the last three elections.
Individual Campaign Contributions in Suffolk County, MA
In the last 4 years (2018-2021), there were 101,872 contributions totaling $49,607,573 to the Democratic Party and liberal campaigns, averaging $487 per contribution.
In the last 4 years, there were 5,605 contributions totaling $7,576,086 to the Republican Party and conservative campaigns, averaging $1,352 per contribution.
(source: Federal Election Commission)