The primary race for the seat held by longtime incumbent state Representative Marjorie Decker remained unsettled early Wednesday, as the Associated Press reported her challenger, graduate student and organizer Evan MacKay, led her by just 40 votes, with 99 percent of votes counted.
The margins early Wednesday appeared close enough for a recount to be ordered under state law.
With the race still uncalled, MacKay declared victory earlier in the evening, confident the campaign’s internal tally showed their opponent could not over take their lead, even as votes were still being counted. MacKay told supporters gathered in a Cambridge bar that “Our movement has won this election.”
Meanwhile, Decker did not explicitly concede the race, nor did she call MacKay, but seemed to come close as she gave an emotional speech about her time in the Legislature.
“There’s a lot of tears to be had. I’m not shedding any tears,” Decker told supporters at her election night party at the Fresh Pond Beer Garden. “I’ve had 25 incredible years of doing what I love.”
Her campaign, however, said MacKay’s celebration was premature.
“Declaring victory is irresponsible,” said Democratic consultant Jason Cincotti, who works on Decker’s campaign. “It’s reckless and it’s incorrect. We are waiting for all the votes to be counted.”
As of little after 1 a.m., Associated Press results showed MacKay leading Decker 50.3 percent to 49.7 percent, with 99 percent of votes counted.
Decker avoided a reporter’s questions Tuesday night, instead making a quick exit to her car.
A loss for Decker would represent a notable upset in a state where few incumbents ever face a serious primary challenge, let alone meet defeat at the ballot box.
Decker, chair of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Public Health, has faced little substantive competition before MacKay decided to challenge her. She has never faced an opponent in the general election, and her last primary challenge was six years ago, in 2018.
In a speech, MacKay thanked volunteers for helping surmount what they said they were told were “impossible odds.”
“This is a wake-up call to the political establishment,” MacKay said. “We’ve shown that our movement is mighty.”
Every two years, all 160 House districts and 40 Senate districts are up for reelection, and this year, like most cycles, just a sliver of voters this year had the chance to cast ballots in a contested primary election.
Many state representatives and senators spent this campaign season unopposed, gliding their way to the November ballot. Some will face Republican opponents, but others will notch victory without even that challenge.
It’s a familiar pattern — only 25 Democratic House candidates have beaten an incumbent in a primary between 2002 and 2022.
Still, there were still a few other contested races around the state.
In Somerville, voters handed incumbent state Representative Erika Uyterhoeven, a democratic socialist, victory over challenger Kathleen Hornby, a progressive who previously worked as a State House staffer for Decker.
MacKay made inaction and the lack of transparency on Beacon Hill central to their campaign. Fellow elected officials rallied to Decker, including some of the state’s top Democrats such as Governor Maura Healey, US Senator Ed Markey, and US Representatives Katherine Clark and Ayanna Pressley, who sent out text messages on behalf of Decker to voters in the days leading up to the election
Before unofficial results were released, Decker supporters ate pizza and sipped beer at her event. But the mood quickly turned somber as word of precinct tallies trickled in.
Attendees hugged and cried. Decker walked around the beer garden and hugged every attendee who came.
“I’m not going away, trust me,” Decker said in her speech. “I don’t know how to go away.”
Other incumbents facing challengers Tuesday included Democratic state Representatives Francisco Paulino of Methuen, Bud Williams of Springfield, David Linsky of Natick, Jack Lewis of Framingham, Thomas Stanley of Waltham, Rady Mom of Lowell, Joseph McGonagle of Everett, Paul Donato of Medford, Rita Mendes of Brockton, and Boston’s Russell Holmes and Jay Livingstone. Republican state Representatives Susan Gifford of Wareham and Paul Frost of Auburn also faced challenges on the GOP ballot.
On the Senate side, state Senators Mark Montigny of New Bedford, Adam Gomez of Springfield, and Nick Collins of Boston, all Democrats, faced primary challenges.
Despite the lack of competition, surrogates and supporters were still hard at work Tuesday.
State Representative Aaron Michlewitz, the powerful House chair of Ways and Means — who had no primary challenger of his own — turned out to promote some of his House colleagues. Photos posted to Instagram showed him handing out flyers with the Massachusetts Building Trades Union for Decker, standing out with signs for Donato, and calling voters for McGonagle from a camping chair in Everett.
Bonde Fine Wine Shop in Harvard Square put out a sign that said “They Say Vote For Marjorie Decker,” and Chrissy Lynch, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, posted a selfie with Decker while promoting the candidate at the polls.
Collins, the incumbent Democrat running in Boston, showed up at Florian Hall in Dorchester to speak with voters headed to the ballot box.
As of Tuesday morning, the state had already exceeded the turnout percentage in 2016, with 9.8 percent voter turnout as of 7 a.m. A total of 497,428 ballots had been cast at that time, most of those by mail.
Secretary of State William F. Galvin said his office expects about 15 percent turnout — which would exceed turnout in the last two comparable state primaries in 2016 and 2012. (2020 was an anomaly, given the COVID pandemic.)
Leslie Morgan, a high school English teacher, said she came to the Friends Center to vote for Decker, as she had for several election cycles.
She said she likes Decker’s policies on gun control and the environment, and while she appreciated MacKay’s progressive politics, she wanted a representative with the experience of multiple terms under her belt.
“Sometimes I’m comfortable with what I already know,” Morgan said. She added, however, that she was dissatisfied with the current political calendar setup, which puts primary day right after Labor Day.
”I almost forgot about it, as a matter of fact, so thank God I was talking to a friend of mine who reminded me,” she said. “I think it means that fewer people will come out and vote.”
Owen Andrews, 67, stood outside the Baldwin School in Cambridge holding a sign for MacKay.
He said his choice was a way to express his discontent with leadership at the State House, which he said has “no accountability” and his excitement to challenge an incumbent — a choice he rarely gets to make.
“As a Democrat, I find that unacceptable,” said Andrews, a retired poet and educator. “I don’t know what is going on in the way the [Democratic] party runs things that nobody feels safe challenging an incumbent. That suggests to me some decadence, and I’d like to see that change. I’d like there to be choices every year. Then it’s a democracy. Right now it’s something else.”
At Somerville’s Albert F. Argenziano School, Katharine Lange, 27, said she was glad to have a choice for state representative in Somerville, because it helps reinforce to elected officials that they can always lose their seats if they don’t get things done.
Other districts don’t have that luxury, she said, and there are consequences.
”The legislative session was quite disappointing. At the end they left a lot of stuff on the table,” she said.
In the end, though, she decided to stick with Uyterhoeven as well, noting that she had only been at the job for one term.
”She seems to be as progressive as I think Somerville is,” Lange said. “She’s done a good job so far.”
Globe correspondent Izzy Bryers contributed to this report.
Samantha J. Gross can be reached at samantha.gross@globe.com. Follow her @samanthajgross. Spencer Buell can be reached at spencer.buell@globe.com. Follow him @SpencerBuell.