Massachusetts

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In a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans three to one, Massachusetts was always considered safely in President Obama’s column even though Mitt Romney had been governor of the state and still lives there. In the end, the president won the state’s 11 electoral votes.

Voters also clogged polling stations on Tuesday to vote in one of the nastier Senate races in recent memory, for the seat formerly held by Edward M. Kennedy.

Scott P. Brown, a moderate Republican who won a special election in 2010 to complete Mr. Kennedy’s term, lost his seat to Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard professor who set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the Obama administration. After the two ran neck and neck for months, Ms. Warren, who raised much more money than Mr. Brown, pulled ahead in the polls conducted days before Election Day.

The race was bitter and nearly imploded for Ms. Warren in a dispute over her assertion of American Indian ancestry. Mr. Brown had a smaller political operation, but he promoted his having been born in Massachusetts. Ms. Warren visited at least eight polling places on Tuesday trying to win over undecided voters. Volunteers for her campaign served hot coffee to voters standing in line.

Democrats had little trouble holding nearly every Congressional seat, including the Fourth District, where Joseph P. Kennedy III, a grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, won the seat vacated by Barney Frank. Mr. Kennedy is the first of his generation in his family to win a Congressional seat.

The only seat in doubt had been the Sixth District, where the incumbent, John F. Tierney, an eight-term Democrat, ultimately (and narrowly) fought off a challenge by Richard Tisei, a former state senator and an openly gay Republican who supports abortion rights.

Voters in Massachusetts also approved an initiatives to eliminate state criminal and civil penalties for the medical use of marijuana. They turned down an initiative to permit doctors to prescribe medicine to end a terminally ill patient’s life.