Progressives Rally Behind Markey, Setting Up November Clash With Deaton

Senator Ed Markey didn’t just survive Tuesday’s primary; he ran away with it.

The four-term senator crushed Rep. Seth Moulton in Tuesday’s Democratic Senate primary, pulling in roughly 65 percent of the vote with just over half of ballots counted when the Associated Press called the race. Moulton, 47, had staked his entire campaign on generational change, arguing the party needed new blood and even backing a constitutional amendment to cap the age of members of Congress. Massachusetts Democrats weren’t buying it.

Markey leaned hard into ideology instead of age, framing the race as a referendum on the progressive movement rather than a birth certificate. It worked. He told supporters Tuesday night the win was “a testament to the power of the progressive movement of our nation,” fueled, he said, by “young people demanding more from their leaders.”

The result bucks a national trend. This cycle has seen a string of longtime Democratic incumbents fall to younger challengers, and Moulton clearly bet he could be the one to topple a Massachusetts institution. Instead, Markey becomes one of the few establishment survivors of 2026’s generational reckoning, doing to Moulton roughly what he did to Rep. Joe Kennedy III back in 2020: outlasting a younger opponent’s change message with the left flank firmly behind him.

Moulton conceded around 9 p.m., calling Markey directly. Markey said he told him he looks forward to working together “to build the better future for everyone that we are both committed to.”

Markey now heads to a general election matchup with Republican John Deaton, who lost to Sen. Elizabeth Warren by a wide margin in 2024. Massachusetts hasn’t sent a Republican to the Senate since Scott Brown’s 2010 upset.