Hillary Clinton in Boston: Massachusetts victor won all but 9 precincts in Dorchester. AP photoCommunities of color give Clinton boost she needed

Hillary Clinton notched a 15-point win over Bernie Sanders in Boston on Super Tuesday on her way to a narrow, but critical statewide victory. The 20,000-vote cushion in the wards and precincts of Boston proved pivotal in what ended up as a 50.1-48.7 victory for the former First Lady and US secretary of state.

On the Republican side, New York real estate mogul Donald J. Trump easily defeated several rival candidates to win the state with nearly 50 percent of the vote. The GOP result was no different in Dorchester, where Trump pummeled his opponents, albeit with vote totals decidedly lower than in the Democratic race. Trump lost only two precincts in Dorchester's 14-9 and 17-10 where he was narrowly defeated by Florida's Marco Rubio.

Sanders managed to win a nine precincts in Dorchester, including the Adams Street Library (16-8) and Savin Hill’s (13-10). The Ward 13 bellwether at the Cristo Rey School generated the single largest pot of votes in the neighborhood. Sanders topped Clinton, 346-305, according to unofficial results supplied to the Reporter by campaign sources.

Sanders also won at St. Ann’s in Neponset, the Kit Clark Apartments and Bellflower Apartments and the Everett School. His widest win was in Ward 13-8, where he pulled 233 votes to Clinton’s 163. In Ward 7, his two victories were slim. He won Ward 7-9 (Bellflower) by a single vote (163-162).

Communities of color came out in force for Clinton. In Wards 14 and 15, many of Clinton’s victories were by proportions of 3 to 1.

In most of Dorchester and Mattapan, Clinton piled up lopsided wins over the Vermont senator. The margins were most pronounced in precincts where voters of color are the super-majority, such as the Groveland Senior Center in Mattapan (18-1), where Clinton defeated her rival, 430-100. The outcome was similar at the Henderson School on Codman Hill (17-4) where Clinton won, 541-206.

The Clinton-Sanders contest was more competitive in Ward 16, where Clinton won the double-precinct bellwether Florian Hall by a combined total of 543-415.

By comparison, Trump took down 208 votes at Florian Hall on Tuesday. His closest rival, John Kasich, finished with 42. But, Trump’s tally sheets were consistently lighter elsewhere. At the Lower Mills Library double-precinct in Ward 17, Trump earned 58 votes to Clinton’s 632.

Clinton’s showing in Boston proved essential to preventing Sanders from capturing Massachusetts. The urgency of her campaign’s effort was apparent in the days and hours leading up the close of polls. The two candidates returned to the Bay State for Get Out the Vote rallies on the eve of the election.

Mayor Martin Walsh hit the polls on Tuesday morning with former President Bill Clinton at Holy Name in West Roxbury.

Stopping into Dorchester’s Ice Creamsmith afterwards, Walsh told reporters, “I still think Hillary Clinton’s going to win Dorchester. And a Hillary Clinton win in Boston – I feel very positive about that.”

Walsh and his team had some 1,000 volunteers canvassing for Clinton before the primary. The former secretary of state had also locked up a hefty chunk of the political establishment in Massachusetts, including the entire congressional delegation aside from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has not endorsed a candidate.

The historic possibility of a woman president aside, Walsh said Clinton’s experience and qualifications make a compelling case for an easy transition into the White House. "If she gets elected president, she can actually start day one, not having a learning curve, and I think that’s important, particularly in this day and age,” Walsh said. "Watching the Republican side, it seems like there's going to be a big learning curve there if one of them ever made it to the final."

Sanders approach is to stoke the flames of dissatisfaction with the status quo as he maintains forcefully that candidates funded by large Wall Street donors and Super PACs find themselves beholden to those interests when in office.

In a release after a Sanders rally Sunday in Milton, the campaign announced it had raised $42 million in small donations in the month of February. “Our supporters are a firewall protecting Bernie from the Clinton campaign’s wealthiest donors and super PACs,” said Jeff Weaver, Sanders’s campaign manager.

Clinton took aim mostly at Donald Trump and the GOP during a rally in Boston’s Old South Meeting House on Monday. “As people have heard what the leading candidates on the Republican side are saying, more and more people are really focused on making sure that we reject the mean-spiritedness, the demagoguery, the bigotry being peddled by Republican candidates,” she said. “America never stopped being great.”

Clinton’s messages and candidacy have resonated most strongly in communities of color, and exit polls out of South Carolina a few weeks back, showed her winning the black vote 86 to 14.

The most prominent Republican voice in the commonwealth, Gov. Charlie Baker, is still hedging on an outright denunciation of the front-runner. "I've made clear that I'm not voting for Donald Trump," Baker told reporters on Monday. "He's not my guy and he's not my candidate."