Written by: Dan Shibilia
Everyone knows Massachusetts is blue and Methuen historically blended in. By 2024 it looked like a toss-up. Tuesday showed that the purple Methuen is on it’s way back to being blue. The numbers from the past three elections show a city that has moved a long way in a short time, and they raise the obvious question of whether it's really changing or just bouncing around.
Gov. Maura Healey beat Republican Michael Minogue in the city 9,672 to 7,191, according to unofficial results the city amended Wednesday. That's a lead of 2,481 votes, or about 14 points. Independent Andrea James picked up 484.
It's quite a turnaround from two years ago, when Kamala Harris squeaked past Donald Trump here by 390 votes, a 1.6-point margin. Healey did about 12.5 points better than that, and she even edged out Joe Biden, who won Methuen by 12.3 points in 2020.
Democrats did well up and down the ballot. Sen. Edward Markey beat John Deaton by 18.5 points. Deaton, who ran against Elizabeth Warren in 2024, lost the city to her by just 3.3. Attorney General Andrea Campbell beat Michael Walsh by 17 points, and Secretary of State William Galvin beat Anne Brensley by 30. Rep. Lori Trahan, who had no opponent in 2024, took 61 percent against two challengers. And State Auditor Diana DiZoglio, Methuen’s jewel, got 14,486 votes to Al Ozonoff's 1,638.
The shift wasn't confined to one corner of town. Healey won 15 of Methuen's 17 voting precincts. Minogue took just two, Precinct 9 by 57 votes and Precinct 11 by 80, while Trump won five in 2024. The biggest swings came in Precincts 1, 2, 4 and 15, where the Democratic margin jumped by something like 20 to 35 points.
To see how Methuen got here, it helps to go back to 2020. Biden got 14,328 votes that year. Harris got 12,220 in 2024, while Trump crept up from 11,127 to 11,830. Warren also finished about 2,500 votes behind what Markey managed in 2020. In between, Healey beat Geoff Diehl in the city in 2022 by 8.6 points, 8,698 to 7,291. So the Democratic margin went from 12.3 points to 8.6, then down to 1.6, and now up to 14.1.
So is Methuen more Democratic now?
Compared with 2024, definitely. Compared with 2020, not really. It's roughly back where it was, with Healey a bit ahead of Biden. Compared with her own race in 2022, Healey gained more than five points, picking up 974 votes while Minogue came in 100 shy of Diehl. Of course, those are different offices in different kinds of elections, so none of this is a perfect apples-to-apples comparison.
Methuen wasn't alone in the 2024 slide. Massachusetts as a whole moved about eight points toward Republicans, with Harris winning the state by 25 points after Biden's 33. Some of the biggest swings were in heavily Latino cities. About a third of Methuen is Hispanic or Latino, according to Census estimates, and next door in Lawrence, Trump's share jumped from 25 percent to 40. The Boston Globe reported that experts pointed to the economy as a big reason. Analysts at CommonWealth Beacon made a different point: 2020 was an unusually high-turnout year, so 2024 looked more like a return to normal than a lurch to the right.
What changed this time?
The numbers can't say for sure, but there are clues. Only 17,548 people voted in Methuen this week, compared with 24,703 in 2024. Minogue got 39 percent fewer votes than Trump did, while Healey got only 21 percent fewer than Harris. In Precinct 1, Trump's 468 votes turned into 156 for Minogue. That looks like a lot of Trump's 2024 voters sat this one out, but the totals can't tell us whether they stayed home or switched sides.
Healey also had some things going for her. Nearly 6 in 10 voters approved of her in an October UMass Amherst/WCVB poll, and she ran hard on tying Minogue to Trump. The Globe reported in October that Democrats were hoping worries about immigration enforcement would pull some Latino voters back, and a Lawrence Republican leader said plenty of people in the community were scared. Whether any of that mattered in Methuen isn't something the results can show.
One caution: these numbers are unofficial and could change when the city certifies them. And since statewide totals weren't available yet, there's no telling whether Methuen moved more or less than the rest of Massachusetts.
Sources
• Methuen City Clerk election results: certified 2024 results, the 2022 state primary file and the unofficial 2026 results amended Nov. 4, 2026, plus the 2020 official results
• 2022 governor, general election, by town (Massachusetts Election Statistics)
• New York Times results page for Methuen, 2026 governor's race (partial count, superseded by the clerk's amended file)
• 2024 presidential election in Massachusetts (statewide totals)
• Census QuickFacts: Methuen
• Boston Globe on Latino voters in 2024, WBUR on the 2024 results and CommonWealth Beacon
• Boston Globe, Oct. 26, 2026, UMass Amherst/WCVB poll and WGBH