Voters will choose Tuesday between Martha Coakley and Charlie Baker to become the next Massachusetts governor, a vote that will spell redemption for one candidate and perhaps end the political career of the other.
Both candidates packed their campaign schedules Monday with events in Greater Boston, but those activities were squeezed around the afternoon funeral for former Boston mayor Thomas M. Menino, which consumed much of what is usually a frenetic election eve.
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The gubernatorial race has been among the most closely fought in the country as Baker and Coakley woo voters in a state whose electorate leans Democratic, but has a penchant for picking Republican governors. Polling shows Baker with a narrow edge, but enough undecided voters to swing the election.
Coakley and Baker have each said that a loss on Tuesday would probably mean he or she has run for office for the last time.
For Democrats, Tuesday provides an opportunity to continue a winning streak almost unmarred since Governor Deval Patrick triumphed eight years ago.
The sole blemish on Democrats’ election record was Coakley’s 2010 loss in a US Senate special election to Scott Brown. Republicans are hoping to revive that playbook, and restore the governorship to GOP hands, where it resided from 1991 until 2007.
The Democratic attorney general is banking on her party’s vote-rustling machine, tuned up by the spate of elections the state has undergone the last several years. Patrick has been stumping for her extensively, and labor unions have largely coalesced around her after a fractious party primary.
Bonnie McGilpin, a Coakley spokeswoman, said almost 5,000 volunteers knocked on 150,000 doors and made almost 500,000 phone calls over the weekend.
Baker, on the other hand, has sought to branch out the state’s standard GOP campaign model, typically heavy on money and messaging. That effort includes a data operation that has targeted potential supporters, augmented by a ground game that staff members boast as pioneering.
The Baker camp logged about 350,000 phone calls and hit more than 40,000 doors over the weekend, said campaign manager Jim Conroy.
At a morning campaign stop at Alexander’s Family Restaurant in Brockton, Coakley called the memory of Menino a reminder of “what it means to stand up for people, what it means to champion people.”
At an afternoon rally in Lynn with US Senator Elizabeth Warren, state senator and party chairman Thomas McGee, and congressional nominee Seth Moulton, Coakley predicted a victory on the strength of the Democrats’ ground game.
“This is so close we can taste it; we can feel it,” she said. “We are knocking on more doors, and calling more people, and getting out the vote that is going to put us over the top tomorrow night.”
Democrats have rallied around Coakley as the campaign has closed. Appearing with Coakley in Somerville Tuesday evening, Warren told Coakley backers, “They believe they can buy a governor’s race for Charlie Baker, but I’ve got news for them: Massachusetts is not for sale.”
Patrick, who generally avoids blue language in his public remarks, enthused, “I feel like kicking a little Republican ass right now.”
At Kristin’s, a Braintree diner packed with a breakfast crowd, Baker stood with two elected Democrats and played up his efforts to lure voters from across the ideological spectrum.
“One of the things I’m most gratified by is the number of people who crossed party lines to endorse us,” he said, joined by Mayor Joseph C. Sullivan and town councilman John C. Mullaney of Braintree.
Baker closed out the day with a nighttime hometown rally at Swampscott High School, where more than 300 supporters cheered and waved campaign signs as he took the stage to bagpipes.
Standing with his wife, Lauren, and opting for a casual wardrobe of jeans and a fleece vest, Baker told the crowd that Massachusetts must realize that it is competing with other states and countries for jobs.
“We need to play to win,” Baker said. “In a Baker administration we play to win!”
Much of the campaign’s final days have dwelled on questions over Coakley’s role in the prosecution of former House speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi, and about Baker’s unsubstantiated story about a tearful encounter with a New Bedford fisherman. Democrats on Monday continued to try to highlight doubts about Baker’s recollection, releasing a radio ad they said would air in the South Coast region through Election Day.
While Democrats have sought to frame the election as a means of sustaining the progress they say has been made under Patrick, national Republicans have invested heavily in Baker, hoping to add a symbolically significant prize to what is shaping up as a solid GOP night across the country.
This year marks the first gubernatorial campaign since a Supreme Court decision permitted political action committees known as super PACs to use unlimited funds to influence elections, a development that appears to have played to Baker’s benefit.
According to a new analysis by Commonwealth magazine, outside spending this year has almost doubled the 2010 pace, with more than half coming from the Republican Governors Association, which had spent $12.4 million as of Monday morning. That’s more than the Democratic Governors Association by a ratio of nearly 9-to-1.
The RGA spent $3.75 million last week alone, more than the $3 million Coakley has spent since the beginning of the year, Commonwealth found. Super PACs, backed largely by unions have spent more than $7 million supporting Coakley and attacking Baker, but they have been outspent on the other side by nearly $5 million.
On Monday, Secretary of State William F. Galvin projected a vote total of 2.26 million, barely above the 2006 turnout, the last time the governorship was open, and just below the 2.32 million who voted in 2010.
Also on the ballot for governor are three independent candidates: Evan Falchuk, Scott Lively, Jeffrey S. McCormick. All three have been polling in low single digits.
Tuesday brings a close to the state’s first open gubernatorial election since Patrick rocketed from political obscurity eight years ago to win back the office for Democrats for the first time in 16 years.
Neither of this election’s leading candidates was such an unknown commodity at the outset.
Coakley and Baker launched their campaigns in September 2013, both making overtures at mending the public image problems that had beset their 2010 candidacies.
Coakley, criticized following that election for not seeking votes aggressively enough, this time embarked on a three-day tour of 19 municipalities, culminating on Yawkey Way outside Fenway Park.
Baker, after acknowledging that he had come across as too hard-edged in his bid to unseat Patrick, set about humanizing himself, highlighting the presence of his wife, Lauren, far more frequently than he did in 2010.
Coakley plans to make stops Tuesday in Springfield, Worcester, and Boston respectively, after voting in her Medford hometown.
Baker will cast his ballot in Swampscott before heading to Peabody, East Boston, and Dedham, his campaign said.
Michael Levenson, David Scharfenberg, Akilah Johnson and Travis Andersen contributed to this report. O’Sullivan can be reached at jim.osullivan@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JOSreports.