WEST SPRINGFIELD — Joseph Biden and Donald Trump widened their leads in the presidential nomination races on March 5, and voters in both Massachusetts as a whole, and West Springfield in particular, placed themselves firmly in the front-runners’ corners.
Both major-party candidates in the 2020 presidential election cruised to wide victories in the 2024 “Super Tuesday” vote. Biden, the incumbent president, took 83% of the vote in the statewide Democratic primary, and just under 80% in West Springfield. Trump, the former president, captured 60% of the statewide Republican vote, and a much larger share of West Springfield GOP ballots, 70%. Challenger Nikki Haley, who garnered about 37% of the Massachusetts vote, got 27% in West Springfield. Trump had at least double Haley’s vote total in seven of West Springfield’s eight voting precincts.
Haley’s 37% statewide result in Massachusetts was among her better results of the day, which saw presidential primary elections in 15 states from Alaska to Virginia. She won only one of those contests, with 49.9% of the vote in Vermont. In the wake of a disappointing Super Tuesday, Haley dropped out of the race the next day.
Republicans in West Springfield went 1,343 for Trump, 519 for Haley, 24 for no preference, 12 each for Chris Christie and Ron DeSantis, 7 for Vivek Ramaswamy, 1 for Ryan Binkley and none for Asa Hutchison.
Apart from Haley and Trump, the other five GOP candidates had already withdrawn from the race by the time Massachusetts started voting. None of them got more than 1% in either town, or in the statewide totals.
On Democratic ballots, West Springfield voted 1,390 for Biden, 135 for no preference, 83 for Dean Phillips and 65 for Marianne Williamson. Shares under 5% for Phillips and Williamson were in line with the statewide result.
Instead of pulling a Democratic or Republican ballot, Massachusetts voters also had the option of participating in the Libertarian Party’s non-binding presidential primary. In West Springfield, “no preference” was the top vote-getter, with 26 votes. The five candidates listed on the ballot all got single-digit totals in town.
