2006 Massachusetts House of Representatives election

The House session ending in January 2007 consists of 139 (87%) Democrats, and 21 (13%) Republicans. The Democrats hold more than a two-thirds majority of the seats in the House. For the Republicans to break that two-thirds majority, they were required to gain 33 Democratic-held seats, a feat that was impossible to accomplish in 2006 as only 32 Democrats faced Republican challengers. Similarly, Republicans could not hope to gain the 59 seats needed to take control of the chamber, as there were not enough challengers to make that possible. Conversely, the Democrats challenged only 8 of the 21 Republican-held seats.

128 of the 160 seats were left uncontested by one of the major parties in the 2006 election.[2]

Two seats changed parties, both Republican seats that switched to Democrats. In the 4th Barnstable District, Sarah Peake (D-Provincetown) defeated Aaron Maloy (R-Orleans) to take the seat of retiring Shirley Gomes (R). In the 13th Middlesex, incumbent Susan Pope (R-Wayland) was defeated by Thomas Conroy (D-Wayland). No other incumbents were defeated, and all other open seats were retained by the party holding them.

• List of Massachusetts General Courts

• http://www.mass.gov/legis/repdis03.htm, accessed March 11, 2006
• Office of Campaign and Political Finance Commonwealth of Massachusetts http://www.mass.gov/ocpf/, accessed March 11, 2006
• http://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/eleres/stateeleres04.pdf, accessed September 29, 2006

• "Nov 7, 2006 State Representative Election", PD43+ Massachusetts Election Statistics, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
• 2006 State Election Candidates, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts