Sen. Ed Markey doesn't need a calendar to know his age was the storyline of this race — he just needed to look at Tuesday night's vote totals. The 80-year-old Massachusetts Democrat trounced Rep. Seth Moulton in the state's Senate primary, brushing off a "generational change" campaign that outspent him and setting up a November face-off against Republican John Deaton.

The Associated Press and NBC News called the race for Markey around 8:27 p.m., less than an hour after polls closed. By the time nearly all precincts had reported, Markey held roughly 65 percent of the vote to Moulton's 35 percent — a lopsided finish for a contest national Democrats had watched as an early test of whether the party's aging Senate bench can survive primary challenges from younger rivals.

Money Wasn't Enough

Moulton, 47, a Marine combat veteran serving his sixth term in the House, poured roughly $7.1 million into ads hammering Markey's age and tenure, compared to about $3.9 million from the incumbent's campaign, according to reporting from GBH News. The spending gap didn't matter. Markey leaned into his progressive record — climate legislation, LGBTQ+ rights, the Green New Deal he co-authored — and rode it to a blowout win in a primary electorate that skews hard left.

"Tonight is a testament to the power of the progressive movement of our nation," Markey told supporters after the race was called.

Moulton conceded quickly and without bitterness, saying he'd called Markey personally to congratulate him. "He has my full support as our Democratic nominee, and we must stand united this November to defeat Donald Trump," Moulton said.

The result is a rebuke, at least in Massachusetts, of the "pass the torch" argument that has dogged aging Senate Democrats nationally since questions about the party's gerontocracy intensified in recent years. Markey — in Congress since 1976, in the Senate since 2013 — is now the party's nominee for a fourth full term.

Deaton Awaits

Markey turns next to the general election against John Deaton, a Marine veteran and cryptocurrency-industry lawyer who lost a 2024 challenge to Sen. Elizabeth Warren by a narrower-than-expected margin. Running unopposed in the GOP primary, Deaton is betting his path to an upset runs through moderate Democrats, unenrolled voters and college-educated women rather than the state's small Republican base.

Still, Massachusetts hasn't sent a Republican to the Senate since Scott Brown's brief 2010-2013 stint, and Markey enters the fall a heavy favorite. The race heads to a November 3 general election that will help decide whether Democrats can flip the seats they need to retake the Senate majority.