With some 116 party delegates on the line, Massachusetts voters will take the measure of Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in next Tuesday’s so-called “Super Tuesday” presidential primary. On the Republican ballot, the candidates, led by Donald Trump, will be chasing 42 delegate seats.

While the Clinton-Sanders race seems hard-fought and close with each candidate’s supporters active on the campaign trail, local Republicans say there has been little national party presence in the state, just the occasional rally and a focus on social media campaigning.

Clinton and Sanders have each set up about a half dozen campaign offices across the state in a drag-out push for every vote. At a press conference in a South Boston union hall Monday morning and again in the afternoon at a rally in Amherst, Sanders called the month’s-long state-by state campaign “a slog.”
While observers say Sanders could benefit from the more liberal support base that ushered US Sen. Elizabeth Warren into office, Clinton has the majority of the state’s Democratic establishment in her corner.

All the members of the Congressional delegation –with the exception of Warren, who has yet to endorse – have come out in staunch support for Clinton. Her Massachusetts Leadership Council, announced in December, lists 190 elected officials, community, labor and grassroots leaders in her camp.
An important name on that list is Martin J. Walsh.

The mayor’s team deployed more than 600 Clinton supporters to New Hampshire to join the thousands of Massachusetts volunteers stumping for her in the Granite State’s primary campaign. Those efforts proved in vain; Sanders took away 60.4 percent of the vote.

However, Walsh says, the two states “are different campaigns.” For one thing, the team is on its home turf, and “people in Boston are more understanding of and more accepting of the door-to-door campaigning that we do here.”

The team has marshaled hundreds over the past few weeks and it is expected that more than 300 will be out at the doors or on the phones for Get Out The Vote weekend.

Polls covering Massachusetts, while limited, have tracked some large gains over time on the Sanders front. A Suffolk University poll in November showed Clinton dominating the race by 25 points; a recent survey by Public Policy Polling found Sanders to be up by seven points; and an Emerson College poll released Monday put them in a dead heat.

Excluding Sanders’ stomping ground of Vermont, Clinton dominates state-by-state surveys on questions of qualifications for office, voter confidence in her as commander-in-chief, race relations, immigration, and women’s issues.

At a rally outside the State House on Feb. 17, former Suffolk County Sheriff Andrea Cabral, current Sheriff Steve Tompkins, state Sen. Linda Dorcena Forry,Boston City Councillors Ayanna Pressley, Michelle Wu, and Tito Jackson, local activist Alejandra St. Guillen, and former president of the Springfield chapter of the NAACP Darnell Williams stood out in support of Clinton.

Pressley, a surrogate for the Clinton campaign who will be deployed in Georgia and South Carolina, said the candidate had demonstrated extraordinary commitment to diverse causes, especially those disproportionately impacting African Americans, Latinos, and other historically disadvantaged or disregarded groups.

Pressley said specific plans matter. “I want those voters to not be offered promises that will not be honored,” she said. “In my experience, they are tired of people making promises that cannot be delivered on.”

Among those supporting Sanders at a following rally were Sen. Jamie Eldridge of Acton, Suffolk County Register of Probate and Family Court Felix D. Arroyo, and Patricia Montes, executive director of the Latin American immigrant group Centro Presente. Montes said Sanders was breaking new ground in discussing fair trade in the context of immigration.

In South Boston on Monday, Sanders announced new endorsements and leveled some rebukes at Clinton. Iron Workers Local 7, a 3,000-worker New England organization, and the national racial justice organization People's Politics offered their support.
“People need to know the difference between hastily adopted campaign rhetoric and the real record and long-held ideas of the candidates,” Sanders said.

An exception to the near-invisibility of GOP candidates on Boston turf is Ohio Governor John Kasich, who spent the early evening of the South Carolina primary at a fundraiser in the Back Bay, and whom former Gov. William Weld endorsed on Tuesday.

With polls indicating a likely Trump win for the state –and with Gov. Charlie Baker being coy about the winner of the vote in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada – marshalling votes against the controversial New York real estate mogul has taken an interesting turn. In an editorial this week, The Boston Globe urged unenrolled voters, who can vote in either party’s primary, to pull a Republican ballot on Tuesday and vote for John Kasich in an attempt to dilute Trump’s delegate takeaway.

The state’s 2,178,240 unaffiliated voters make up 54 percent of the voting pool, according to the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s 2015 numbers, outpacing 35 percent registered Democrats and 11 percent Republicans.

“The more people vote for one of Trump’s opponents, the fewer delegates he’ll receive from Massachusetts,” the Globe editorial read as it encouraging voters to use so-called “bullet ballots” in the primary, which would not impact their voting capabilities in the November general election to vote within their party.

Walsh came down firmly against the Globe’s idea in speaking with the Reporter on Tuesday.

“I think the voters [on Tuesday] are too important to throw their votes away," Walsh said. “They should vote for the candidate they support, and I don’t think that they should necessarily vote to influence the other party.”

The state GOP revamped its delegate rules in September, according to spokesman Terry MacCormack. While delegates for the July convention are still distributed proportionally, the barrier for receiving delegates has been lowered from 15 percent to 5 percent. This is in part to avoid a situation like that of 2012, when former Gov. Mitt Romney was the only candidate to clear that benchmark and walked away with the entire delegation.

This could have resulted in increased national Republican presence in the state, but the candidates are not making themselves felt within Boston, said State Committeewoman Rachel Kemp of Dorchester.

Patti Jennings, who is running for reelection to the Republican State Committee in the First Suffolk District, said, “What I haven’t really seen yet is presidential campaigns really fighting for the Massachusetts vote.” She said the logic makes sense, given the small number of delegates up for grabs in a state with minimal Republican elected presence.

Some candidates have reached out to local ward committees via social media, Kemp said, but the absence of door-to-door efforts is noticeable.

“I’m actually surrounded by representatives who have been part of the dialogue for more than 60 years, and they are waiting with bated breath to be approached by any candidate who will speak to them; speak to the core values of the parties and engage them,” she said.

In addition to the presidential race, voters in Dorchester and Mattapan will encounter many familiar names on their ballots, especially on the Democratic side. Voters elect their ward committees in this primary. Typically presented as one large list of names— or a “slate”— voters can fill in the mark for the whole group or vote one-by-one for (or against) individuals.

Among those who will appear on the Democratic committee slate in Ward 13 will be former state Rep. Carlos Henriquez. Patrick Long is running against the group of 30 committee prospects. Rep. Nick Collins and Maureen Feeney are each running unopposed for state committee for the First Suffolk District. On the Republican side, Patricia Jenkins is seeking reelection as state committeewoman for the First Suffolk, and has been endorsed by Gov. Charlie Baker for the post.

State Sen. Linda Dorcena Forry and city Policy Chief Joyce Linehan are running with the slate in Democratic Ward 17. In Ward 16, five people are running for the Republican ward committee.