The deep resentment toward the Irish immigrants led to deep religious, cultural, and economic divisions between the parties--division which, for the most part, were non-ideological. During the mid-part of the century, Republican Senators like Leverett Saltonstall often advocated a liberal internationalism combined with a deep concern for social and environmental concerns.

But politicians in both parties agree that the ethnic hold over voters, and what some say is a continuing resentment towards the old-line Yankee Republicans, is being loosened, and that change could have a profound impact on both parties.

There are, however, still strong party ties that continue despite ideological shifts within the party, Democrats who favor the death penalty, oppose abortion, and oppose the nuclear freeze, are still sent to the Legislature, even when running against liberal Republicans.

"There are little old ladies in Dorchester who worship Ronald Reagan, but who will not vote for him because he is a Republican," says Rep. Andrew S. Natsios (R-Holliston), the Republican state party chairman. "It's not as if [the Democratic state leaders] are farning liberals."

Despite the strong liberal flavor of the state, politicians from across the ideological spectrum agree that party affiliations in the state legislature--generally considered the best indicator of electoral sympathies--do not accurately reflect the mind-set of the state.

Though Democrats hold a vast majority of seats in the legislature, the ideological make-up is strongly centrist. Senate President William M. Bulger (D-Boston) and House Speaker Thomas W. McGee (D-Lynn) are considered centrist, if not non-ideological, and liberals like Sen. George Bachrach (D-Watertown) and Sen. Jack H. Backman (D-Brookline) have little influence on policy matters.

But the demographics of state electoral politics appear to be changing, and the Republican Party machinery has long since excised the more liberal Yankees from its ranks--its two most visible members, Senate candidate Elliot L. Richardson '41 and defeated 1982 gubernatorial candidate John W. Sears '52 receive their most savage criticism from their own party.

"The Democratic party is struggling out of its New Deal skin and we're struggling out of our Tom Dewey, Wendell Wilkie skin," says Sears, a veteran of both State House and Boston city politics. "But the Republican party has never been the Yankee enclave everyone says it is."

Sears cites the current party leadership. Andrew Natsios, the party chairman, the sole Congressman Conte, and the minority leadership in both houses of the legislature as evidence that the days of Yankee Republicanism are long past.

Yet, the friction--many Republicans use the term "war"--between the liberal Yankees and the populist-conservative ethnics continues, with each wing blaming the other for the Party's inability to make a dent on the state political scene.

"We can't nominate the liberals and out-liberal the Democrats," says Gordon Nelson, a former state party chairman and a leader of the party's right wing. "Richardson is the type of candidate who used to win in this state, but no longer. That strategy doesn't work here anymore."

Nelson cites a string of liberal republican candidates, including Sears in 1982, gubernatorial candidate Francis W. Hatch, Jr. in '78, and Senator Ed Brooke in '78, who lost to Democrats. The reason, he says, is that they did not represent their real constituency, the working class Republicans and the conservative Democrats that booted Dukakis out of office in '78 in favor of right-wing Democrat Edward J. King.

The party must now strongly identify with President Reagan, who carried the state by 2421 votes out of nearly 2.5 million cast, he says. "Among those 200,000 people who vote in the Republican party, the most popular person is not Ray Shamie or Elliot Richardson, but Ronald Reagan."

But Republican moderates and liberals argue that the party's problems stem not from too liberal candidates, but rather from the Republican leadership's drift toward the right. They say the party's fortunes reached a nadir under the leadership of the likes of Gordon Nelson, whom Sears describes as "not only in right field but beyond the foul pole."

Says liberal State Rep. Thomas J. Vallely (D-Boston). "The Massachusetts republicans are dominated by the conservative wing of the party. But where the conservative movement has an intellectual underpinning around the country, there is no intellectual base in the state."