Roosevelt ran with Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri, while Dewey’s running mate was Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio.

Roosevelt carried the state with 52.80% of the vote to Dewey’s 46.99%, a Democratic victory margin of 5.81%.

Once a typical Yankee Republican bastion in the wake of the Civil War, Massachusetts had been a Democratic-leaning state since 1928, when a coalition of Irish Catholic and other ethnic immigrant voters primarily based in urban areas turned Massachusetts and neighboring Rhode Island into New England’s only reliably Democratic states.

Massachusetts voted for Al Smith in 1928, and for Franklin Roosevelt in his three election campaigns preceding 1944.

However Roosevelt won the most heavily populated parts of the state including the cities of Boston, Worcester, and Springfield, while most of Dewey’s wins were small or island counties.