State Delegation Settles In

WBUR reported results of the Sept. 1, 2026 Massachusetts state House and Senate primaries. We've drawn on their AP race-call data, plus the Malden City Clerk's posted results, throughout this piece.¹

National news focused on U.S. Sen. Ed Markey's convincing 64.9% win over U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton in the Democratic primary. Markey, a Malden native, did even better at home: 81.7% of the vote in his home city. But two other races on the same ballot will actually reshape Malden's state delegation -- and both of them turned out differently in Malden than they did across the rest of the district.

Statewide, Markey took 572,595 votes (64.9%) to Moulton's 310,365 (35.2%). In Malden alone, Markey's home-field advantage was even more lopsided: 5,577 votes (81.7%) to 1,253 (18.4%).

The House Race: Melrose's Migliorelli Wins the District, Loses Malden

Leila Bhatti Migliorelli, of Melrose, is on her way to filling Kate Lipper-Garabedian's old seat as the 32nd Middlesex District's Democratic state representative -- covering parts of Malden, Melrose, and Wakefield. Migliorelli defeated John Higgins, who had Mayor Gary Christenson's endorsement, by roughly two-to-one. Morning estimates on Sept. 2 had her at 66.6% of the vote; by the afternoon, with 99% of votes counted, that had climbed to a final 71.5% (5,772 votes) to Higgins's 28.5% (2,303).

Malden itself didn't go along with that result. In the city's own precincts, Higgins actually won, 61.8% (395 votes) to Migliorelli's 38.2% (244) -- Malden was the one community in the district that backed the mayor's endorsed, hometown-adjacent candidate, even as Melrose and Wakefield carried Migliorelli to a decisive district-wide win.

The Higgins campaign also ran into what the Melrose Messenger called "an unusual move": in August, the Massachusetts Teachers Association withdrew its endorsement of Higgins after he posted a campaign video criticizing his opponent's role in Melrose's Proposition 2½ override, which raised property taxes citywide.² The irony, as the Messenger also noted, is that Higgins's own endorser, Malden Mayor Christenson, put forward an override vote of his own in Malden.

The Senate Race: Lipper-Garabedian Wins the District, Loses Malden

Kate Lipper-Garabedian won the Fifth Middlesex Democratic Senate primary outright, taking 63.5% of the vote (15,727 votes) against two sitting Malden city councillors: Carey McDonald (23.3%, 5,763 votes) and Ryan J. O'Malley (13.2%, 3,273 votes). The seat represents six communities -- Malden, Melrose, Reading, Stoneham, Wakefield, and Winchester -- and opened up when Sen. Jason Lewis announced his retirement in February.

As in the House race, Malden's own votes told a different story than the district as a whole. Within Malden, McDonald actually finished first: 44.4% (2,874 votes) to Lipper-Garabedian's 34.4% (2,227) and O'Malley's 21.3% (1,380). McDonald carried their home city -- and still lost the seat by nearly 40 points district-wide.

That split points to a rougher night for Mayor Christenson who endorsed both losing candidates, Higgins and McDonald, and contributed to McDonald's campaign. This puts Christenson at odds with the Governor and every other member of Malden's state delegation, who lined up behind Lipper-Garabedian. Both of the mayor's picks carried Malden. Neither carried the district.

Turnout: More Voters, About the Same Rate

Malden's Sept. 1 turnout was 20.5% -- 38,625 registered voters, 7,950 ballots cast. That's slightly below the 21.8% turnout of the November 2023 municipal election, but it produced more actual ballots, because the voter rolls have grown. Malden has added roughly 2,600 registered voters since 2023.

November 2025 was the quiet year by comparison: only 15% of Malden's then-37,854 registered voters turned out, for 5,805 ballots cast -- even though 2025 was a citywide municipal election, the kind of race that often drives turnout higher, not lower.

Two Councillors, Two Very Different First Steps Up

Digging into the numbers raises its own questions about political trends in Malden. Carey McDonald won 4,384 citywide votes running for Councillor-at-Large in 2023. In 2025, running for the same seat with lower turnout, McDonald won significantly fewer votes -- 3,056. And now, in 2026's highest-turnout year of the three, McDonald's Malden vote count slipped again, to 2,874 -- even in a race they won at home. Three elections, the same name on the ballot, and a shrinking vote count every time.

For Ward 4 Councillor Ryan O'Malley, the story is closer to the opposite: this was his first citywide, multi-city campaign. Ward 4 has the smallest number of registered voters of Malden's eight wards, which makes O'Malley's jump to a six-community state Senate race a considerably bigger stage than his home turf.

Follow the Money

We reviewed campaign finance filings from the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance for all three Senate candidates and built out some comparisons of our own.⁴ Carey McDonald brought in the most out-of-state money of the three: just 61.5% of their 2026 contributions came from Massachusetts addresses -- meaning nearly 40% of their money came from outside the state, compared with roughly 8% for Lipper-Garabedian and 7% for O'Malley.

Lipper-Garabedian led the way in total spending, with $164,648.47 reported spent year-to-date -- more than three times what McDonald spent ($46,303.70) and eighteen times O'Malley's total ($9,214.39). She also outspent what she'd raised in the race itself ($68,862.40), a gap her campaign's own committee history helps explain: OCPF filings show a $70,000 transfer into her account from a prior committee (from her time on the Melrose School Committee and City Council), money that predates this Senate race and isn't counted as a new 2026 donation in our analysis.

Measured by cost per vote, O'Malley ran the leanest campaign of the three: $2.82 spent per vote received, against $8.03 for McDonald and $10.47 for Lipper-Garabedian.

The House Race, Town by Town

Disclaimers: contribution and expenditure filings may still be in transit or unrecorded at the time of this story -- treat the 2026 year-to-date totals above as a snapshot, not a finely tuned tally. Some figures in this piece were transcribed by hand or with AI assistance and, while we made a reasonable effort at accuracy, errors are possible. Official public records, linked below, should be treated as the final word.