Brown’s kind of town – Republican wins Winthrop en route to victory over Coakley

Winthrop voters turned out in larger than expected numbers and gave Republican Scott Brown the majority vote over Democrat Martha Coakley in the U.S. Senate special election on Tuesday.

Winthrop cast 3,596 votes for Brown and 2,902 votes for Coakley. Libertarian candidate Joseph Kennedy received 71 votes. Fifty percent of Winthrop’s 13,000 eligible voters participated in the election.

Brown, a state senator from Wrentham, won election to the United Senate, receiving 1,168,107 votes statewide. Coakley, the state attorney general, received 1,058,682 votes. Brown will succeed interim U.S. Senator Paul Kirk and the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who held the seat from 1962 to 2009. The last Republican elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts was Edward W. Brooke, who served two terms from 1967 to 1979.

“It was a big turnout for a bad weather day,” said Town Clerk Carla Vitale. “Everything went very smoothly at the polls. I want to commend my poll workers who’ve done three elections in three months. They’re a good team.”