The Boston Globe, September 2025
Mayor Michelle Wu trounced her three challengers across the city in the first round of voting for Boston mayor on Tuesday, emerging from the night with an overwhelming 49-point advantage over her top challenger, Josh Kraft. But the precinct-by-precinct vote breakdown the city released Wednesday gives a more detailed picture of where and how Kraft’s campaign strategy failed to build a coalition that could even approach being a real threat to Wu ahead of November. Following his poor showing, Kraft ended his mayoral bid Thursday evening.
The city’s unofficial vote tallies show that Kraft not only fell short in the whiter, more conservative areas of the city, like South Boston — which made up the core of former Councilor Annissa Essaibi George’s base in her 2021 mayoral run — but he also failed to make inroads in the communities of color Kraft had been courting ahead of September’s preliminary. Kraft “just didn’t do all that well anywhere,” said David Hopkins, professor of political science at Boston College. “But you can certainly point to some neighborhoods that he would have needed to carry to be close to the mayor in the citywide count, and he just fell far short.” Wu won all 22 wards in the city in Tuesday’s preliminary, as well as264 of the city’s 275 precincts. Kraft claimed only nine precincts.
Seven of those nine were in Wards 6 and 7 in South Boston. On Tuesday, Wu flipped both wards overall, which had supported Essaibi George in the 2021 preliminary and general elections. Kraft received nearly 1,000 fewer votes than Essaibi George did in the 2021 preliminary in Wards 6 and 7, despite 2021 being a far more crowded race. Essaibi George, though, had won several city-wide elections and spent six years on the Boston City Council as an at-large member.
