Massachusetts · Semi-open primary · Tuesday, September 1
Independent Veterans of America · Field Note

Two of three voters here are independent. Tuesday, they must pick a side.

Massachusetts has the highest share of independent voters in America — an estimated 3,278,113 people, 66.62% of the electorate. They can vote tomorrow. But only by taking one party’s ballot: the Democrats’ races, or the Republicans’ races. Never both. Never a mix. The state’s clear majority gets to shape one column of November’s ballot — and has to borrow a party to do it.

Every one of Massachusetts’ 351 cities and towns, with a spike scaled to its registered unenrolled voters — MA Secretary of the Commonwealth, February 1, 2025. Drag to rotate · hover any town · + / − to zoom. Heights use a square-root scale: Boston has 3,750× the unenrolled voters of Gosnold, so a straight scale would flatten every small town to nothing. The 351 towns sum exactly to the state’s published total.
Democratic ballotSenate, Governor, House, Legislature — Democratic candidates only.
Pick
one
Republican ballotSenate, Governor, House, Legislature — Republican candidates only.
Not allowed:choosing the candidates you actually support, across both ballots. An independent who likes a Democrat for Senate and a Republican for Governor must abandon one of them.
No. 1 of 51

Nowhere in America is
more independent.

This is not a swing-state quirk. Massachusetts has the largest independent majority in the country — and it is exactly these voters, the most independent electorate in America, who are told their choices come pre-sorted by party.

63.4%
2 · Alaska
66.62%
1 · Massachusetts
51.3%
3 · Rhode Island
The electorate

Both parties are minorities here.
One is a rounding error.

66.62% independent≈ 3,278,113 voters · must borrow a party’s ballot
24.5% Democratslimited to the Democratic primary
8.01% Republicanslimited to the Republican primary

The 8% get their own primary. The 24.5% get their own primary. The 67% majority gets to borrow one of them — whole, as-is, no substitutions.

Three states, three doors

Better than closed.
Still not free.

Massachusetts is ahead of the closed states — and behind the one that finished the job. This is what the same Tuesday looks like behind three different doors.

Closed · primary Aug 18

Florida

3,324,324
registered no-party voters

Locked out entirely. No ballot of any kind in the races that picked November’s nominees.

Semi-open · primary Sept 1

Massachusetts

3,278,113
independents · est. · 66.62% of the state

Allowed in — one party’s ballot at a time. The majority votes on a menu written by the minorities.

All-candidate · Alaska

Alaska

369,011
independents · est. · 63.42% of the state

Every candidate from every party on one ballot, for every voter. Top finishers advance. No side-picking required.

The second-most independent state in America already lets every voter choose among all the candidates. The most independent state doesn’t. That gap is a policy choice, not a law of nature.

The veterans

The veteran vote is
an independent vote.

227,919Massachusetts veterans
ACS 2024, civilian 18+
~111,680Estimated veterans who identify independent

They didn’t pick a side when they signed up to serve. Tomorrow, Massachusetts will make each of them pick one anyway — or sit the primary out.

The fine print

How it works, and
where these numbers come from.

The rules, the sources, and what “estimated” means

How the semi-open primary works

  • Unenrolled (independent) voters choose either party’s ballot at the polls and remain unenrolled afterward. Choosing a ballot does not enroll you in that party.
  • The ballot is all-or-nothing. Whichever ballot you take, every contest on it — Senate, Governor, House, Legislature — lists only that party’s candidates. There is no mixing candidates across parties in a Massachusetts primary.
  • Party members are limited to their own party’s primary. A registered Democrat cannot take a Republican ballot, or the reverse.
  • One ballot per voter — the choice is which primary, not both.

Where the numbers come from

  • The 3,278,113 independents (66.62%) and the party shares (24.5% Democratic, 8.01% Republican) are modeled from voter-file history (Independent Voter Project, L2), the same construct used in our 2026 Primary Calendar and state fact sheets. Massachusetts registers voters by party; the modeled figure closely tracks the state’s published enrollment, and we label it as modeled rather than mixing constructs.
  • The map uses a different, better source. The spike map at the top is built from the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth’s own count — Registered Voters and Party Enrollment as of February 1, 2025 — which reports 3,254,435 unenrolled voters, 64.75% of 5,025,826 registered. That is a count, not an estimate, and all 351 cities and towns sum to it exactly. It sits within 1% of the modeled figure in the headline.
  • Why we still lead with the modeled number. The ranking (#1 of 51, ahead of Alaska at 63.42% and Rhode Island at 51.33%) is computed across all 50 states plus D.C. inside one consistent modeled dataset. Dropping one state’s official count into that league table would not be a like-for-like comparison, so the headline and the ranking stay on the modeled construct and the map says plainly which source it uses.
  • 227,919 veterans is real (U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2024 1-Year, table S2101, civilian 18+). The ~111,680 who identify independent applies the 49% veteran independent-identification share — an identity estimate, labeled as such, used only for the veteran slice.
  • Florida’s 3,324,324 is different in kind: actual registered no-party voters from the Florida Division of Elections (June 30, 2026) — a count, not an estimate, from our Florida Locked Out report.

Sources: Independent Voter Project / L2 voter-file analysis (independent and party shares); U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2024 1-Year, table S2101 (veterans); Florida Division of Elections (Florida registration); Massachusetts primary rules per M.G.L. c.53 as summarized in our 2026 Primary Calendar. Spike map: Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth, Registered Voters and Party Enrollment as of February 1, 2025; town boundaries from U.S. Census TIGERweb county subdivisions. Compiled by Independent Veterans of America.

A majority this size shouldn’t
have to borrow a ballot.

If you’re unenrolled in Massachusetts: vote tomorrow — your ballot still counts, and use it. Then help us win the version where you never have to pick a side to be heard.

See every state’s rules →
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