November 9, 2026
WITH THE DUST settled on Election Day, Democrats kept a hold on almost all their levers of power in the Bay State, and the congressional delegation is heading toward several powerful leadership positions. And there was plenty of controversial local policy voters weighed in on.
This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith talked with Talia Lissauer of The Berkshire Eagle and Ella Adams of the State House News Service about election week, starting with the late-breaking result on a measure to relax single-family zoning.
Most of the state’s regional centers voted in favor of Question 7, which would have lowered square footage requirements to build single-family homes, though it applied only to areas with sewer systems and therefore would have excluded much of the state. Lissauer noted that many small Berkshire County towns voted against the question, which ultimately would not have affected them.
“We really need more housing over here,” she said, and there are local efforts to increase the housing stock. As for the urban-focused ballot measure, “a lot of people said that this really was a good start, but there just wasn’t much of a cost-benefit here that would make sense. I was not expecting it to be as close as it was, especially out here, because I was thinking it was going to be a ‘no.’”
The far western parts of Massachusetts featured few competitive races. Even with nine ballot questions, voters and activists told Lissauer that they would have liked a busier ballot with fiercer competition to represent the region.
Much of the action down-ballot was on the South Coast, with a number of Democratic flips of Republican seats and one long-held blue seat going red.
“I think, at the statewide level, everyone expected the blue to remain,” said Adams. But in some more purple districts in southeastern Massachusetts, there were murmurs from both parties that “there are certain races that they’re keeping an eye on, that maybe are closer than they anticipated them to be or, as the days went on, that this might actually end up flipping.”
One race is still in limbo, with a Democrat up by fewer than 100 votes in the Republican-held Second Plymouth House District.
On the episode, Smith, Lissauer, and Adams dig into the slew of ballot questions (1:00), the largely foregone conclusions on congressional races and statewide offices (17:30), and the few flips of the cycle in state legislative races (24:30).
Courtesy of Commonwealth Beacon
