By Bob Katzen
Last week was the deadline for candidates for state representative and state senator to file their nomination papers with Secretary of State Bill Galvin’s office. Each candidate for the House needed 150 verified signatures to qualify while each Senate candidate needed 300.
There are 200 seats (160 House seats and 40 Senate seats) up for grabs in the upcoming 2026 state election but only 83 of those (41.5 percent) will be contested, according to Secretary of State’s Bill Galvin’s office. In the remaining 117 districts, only the incumbent is on the ballot in 115 districts while there are two House districts where the incumbent is not running, but only one non-incumbent candidate is running for the seat.
That means that there are 25 incumbent senators (62.5 percent of the 40 total seats) and 90 incumbent representatives (56.2 percent of the 160 total seats) who will not face any challenger in the September 1 primary election or the November 3 general election. Those numbers could change if anyone decides to run a write-in campaign but only a handful, if any candidates, ever wage a write-in campaign so the numbers are pretty firm.