Up until not too long ago, MA would even send Republicans to Congress: Brooke, Saltonstall, Lodge.
That said, in all other ways we are a one-party state and have been so for quite some time. Like other areas of the country, our urban areas tend to dominate. We have many former mill cities that, charitably speaking, are on the "taking" side of the ledger, and they tend to vote the way you think they would.
We are also very much a machine state. That's the only way you can explain people like Markey.
And we are a higher-education dominated state. That's how you explain people like Warren, and people like Kerry. College-aged kids, who tend to be liberal / progressive, put in their 4+ years in greater Boston and vote the way you think they would.
We're not Vermont, but we do have our own hippie swath in the Berkshires.
Our least liberal areas are the suburbs and ex-burbs of greater Boston, but sprinkled around that crescent are several ultra-rich towns populated by limo liberals and the most odious variety of NIMBY progressives.
But it's the machine that'll keep the Commonwealth blue. Our state GOP party is a painful joke.
-—Our state GOP party is a painful joke.-—
Yes. Your whole post was excellent and correct.
Three are still enclaves of lunchpail towns who aren’t reflexively DEM and when they get fed up enough will vote the other way, though.
My suburban middle-class town narrowly voted for Trump. And there were many others. But - of course - Hillary’s margins in Boston, Worcester, Brockton, Taunton, Fall River, etc swamp all that.