MA does have a high rate of voter apathy and a GOPe that intentionally tries to lose because it's filled with RiNOs deliberately sabotaging local candidate selection to keep things in controlled opposition status. Machine fraud (Shiva despite being nutty is correct that something was f***y in the primaries, and I suspect the MA establishment uses it to keep undesirables from mounting primary challenges at times when they don't have enough useable names on dirty voter rolls to assure themselves victory in a close contest) and ballot stuffing from inactive people on the voter rolls does happen. I know deceased family members were kept on the rolls in Finneran's district and were voting in elections long after they passed away because they weren't removed from the rolls on top of getting juror summons until I complained.
I think even with all the media/educational bias in MA, that if we had a real opposition party and the fraud was cleaned up that MA would look more like PA, MI, WI with red, blue, and purple areas.
MA was a 50/50 political state until the late 1950s/early 60s when the Catholic Church (thanks to crooked Cardinal Cushing) got in bed with the Kennedys and got enough of a majority preaching form the pulpit (also when I think they infiltrated the local GOP to become controlled opposition) to permanently rig the state in their favor.