Counting Massachusetts

What is the deal with Massachusetts electoral returns? If the Boston Globe ’s figures are accurate, last night Coakley won handily in the most populous towns: 62 percent of the vote in the top ten, and 54 percent in the second ten. What’s more, she won in the least populous towns, gaining 51 percent in the hundred smallest reporting towns.

So how could she lose? By getting an astonishingly bad 42 percent in the 230 or so towns between. In what other state does that kind of breakdown occur? Win the cities, win the villages, and lose the election?