This time it wasn’t at all close: Last week Massachusetts voters rejected a proposal to eliminate the income tax by more than a 2-to-1 margin. Only 30 percent voted “yes”, down from the 46 percent that put a big scare into the political establishment in 2002. (Blanks are not counted in either case.)

Carla Howell and the Libertarian army behind Question 2 rallied 902,000 voters this time, up a bit from the 886,000 they got in 2002. But this was a presidential-election year, with a much higher turnout, and the “no” vote nearly doubled, from 1.07 million to 2.06 million.

A major reason for the close vote in 2002 was the appeal of Howell’s proposal in relatively low-income urban areas. It passed in Revere, Clinton, and Milford, and it did better than its 46 percent state average in Leominster, Brockton, Fall River, Lawrence, Lynn, and Lowell. That pattern did not hold up this year:

Compared with the 2002 vote, this year the anti-income-tax movement lost considerable ground in urban areas. Howell promised that the repeal of the income tax would mean that workers would keep more of their salaries, but that argument may have fallen flat among voters afraid of losing their jobs entirely. The anti-tax vote fell steeply in Bristol County, which hugs the eastern border of Rhode Island and has an unemployment rate of 6.8 percent (well above the state average of 5.3 percent in September). It also dropped sharply in Springfield’s Hampden County, where the unemployment rate is 6.4 percent.

Conversely, support for the tax repeal did not fall by quite so much in the low-unemployment counties of Barnstable (Cape Cod, where the rate is 4.8 percent) and Middlesex (Boston’s western and northwestern suburbs, with a 4.5 percent rate). Support rose, slightly, in only one community: Aquinnah, on Martha’s Vineyard. (See the spot of green on the western end of the island.)

In 10 of the 11 Gateway Cities (Lowell being the exception), the “yes” percentage dropped by more than the statewide average of 15 points. (See list below.) Among communities with more than 10,000 votes, the anti-tax contingent shrunk the least in Acton (down 9 points to 29 percent), Wellesley (down 9 points to 33 percent), and Lexington (down 10 points to 24 percent).

“Yes” vote in Gateway Cities (compared with 2002)

Brockton: 32%, down from 49%

Fall River: 25%, down from 49%

Fitchburg: 31%, down from 47%

Haverhill: 36%, down from 53%

Holyoke: 20%, down from 42%

Lawrence: 29%, down from 48%

Lowell: 34%, down from 48%

New Bedford: 25%, down from 46%

Pittsfield: 19%, down from 42%

Springfield: 25%, down from 44%

Worcester: 29%, down from 45%

The map below shows the “yes” vote from last week. As in 2002, opposition was strong in the rural western part of the state and in the wedge of reliably liberal suburbs going northwest from the city of Boston. But the addition of the Gateway Cities to the pro-tax coalition turned a competitive race into a rout.