Slowly but surely, Worcester County has gone Republican - Boston Globe
Neal, a Springfield Democrat, felt he was seeing the first explosive evidence of what was brewing at the precinct and ward levels of the towns he represented in Worcester County. The once Democrat-dominated county — a collection of rural and suburban communities, three small cities, and the city of Worcester — is now a Republican enclave. Some of the most conservative groups in the state GOP, many of them renegade competitors to the party establishment in Boston, are based in the county. “It’s the most underreported political story in the state,’’ Neal said in a recent interview. His district, for many years until it was redrawn for the 2012 election, spread east from his home city, taking in the southern Worcester County communities along the Connecticut border and reaching into the Blackstone Valley. The political shift gives Republicans fertile ground in a wide geographical swath in the middle of a very blue state. And it is giving them confidence that Worcester County, with its large — and growing — percentage of the state’s voting population, can be ground zero for its resurgence in Massachusetts. Source: www.bostonglobe.com
