Hughes Followers Analyze Vote Hold Candidacy Cut Lodge Total

Political soothsayers predicted Thomas E. Dewey's election in 1948 and foresaw H. Stuart Hughes' candidacy cutting into Democrat Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy's vote total in the 1962 Massachusetts senatorial race. Their level of accuracy apparently hasn't improved much in 14 years.

A close analysis of voting patterns in the November 6 election by Hughes' campaign workers revealed that the independent candidate's vote probably hurt Republican George Cabot Lodge's total, but did not affect the Kennedy vote.

Lodge Areas Vote Hughes

Three towns gave Hughes over ten per cent of their total vote and 22 other towns and cities gave him over five per cent. All but one of these went heavily for Lodge and Edward W. Brooke, usually by as much as three of four to one. The lone exception was Cambridge, which gave the Harvard professor 7.7 per cent of its vote, but still gave a majority to Teddy.

Cambridge Special Case

Chester Hartman, one of the Hughes' aides working on the vote analysis, pointed out that Hughes' comparatively large Cambridge vote was a special case explained by two factors. The Harvard vote and a "chauvinistic" vote prompted by the listing of the candidates' home residence on the ballot both swelled the Hughes total, according to Hartman.

In other communities where Hughes did not run so well, the Hughes' workers compared the gubernatorial vote and the Senatorial results. They found a fairly direct correlation between Hughes' total and the difference between Volpe's and Lodge's totals.

In Pittsfield, where Hughes received 780 votes, Lodge's total was 700 votes less than Volpe's. While Hughes campaign workers admit that such a striking correlation might be mere demographic coincidence, they feel that this correlation was widespread enough to warrant their conclusions.

The official ward by ward breakdown for Cambridge has not yet been released. Hartman believes, however, than these figures will reflect the statewide trends: Hughes will be much stronger in heavily Republican wards than in Democratic ones.