One reason why the Registered % for Republicans is so low in Massachusetts is because Inpendents can choose what primary they want to vote for, and still can remain as Independently Registered. People like having the ability to choose which ballot to take, especially since the most hotly contested primaries are on the Dimwit side. In the 1990’s they used to change the person’s registration after voting in a Primary to that party. The Democrats noticed that the R% was starting to go up again, and so they got rid of that rule, and now the R% is down to 12.5% again. If we didn’t have the stupid open primaries, the Republican % in Massachusetts would probably be on the order of 20-25%.
Right now, there is little point in being a registered Republican in the state for that very reason. Here in TN, we don’t have registration by party. In Nashville, it is a pointless exercise to vote in a local Republican primary for partisan contests because there are often almost no candidates, all the action is on the rodent side. Oddly enough, it benefitted having non-partisan contests in my city, since we had a few Conservative Republicans win council seats in the past month, in some mixed-race and working class areas of the city (including my district, which is minority White).