BOSTON (AP) – After months of campaigning on the road, John Kerry returned to Massachusetts on Tuesday to find all the comforts of home: a little seafood for lunch, a chance to vote for himself at his local polling place and support from the voters who have repeatedly sent him to Washington.

“I don’t think anybody can anticipate what it’s like to see your name on the ballot for president,” he said after voting at his Beacon Hill neighborhood’s polling place at the Statehouse. “It’s very special. It’s exciting.”

The same voters who elected him to the U.S. Senate four times also gave him an overwhelming victory in Massachusetts over President Bush. With 78 percent of the precincts reporting, Kerry posted 63 percent to Bush’s 37 percent.

It was a day of rituals for Kerry. As he had on other election days, he spent lunch at Boston’s Union Oyster House, a 178-year-old restaurant near historic Quincy Market.

He sat in his usual spot at the horseshoe-shaped oyster bar, where Daniel Webster once had has his daily glass of brandy. Kerry ordered two-dozen littleneck clams, and fillet of sole with mashed potatoes and cole slaw, according to server Anton Christen. Teresa Heinz Kerry ordered crab cakes, he said.

Kerry did very little campaigning in his predominantly Democratic home state, but this is where he sat back to watch the results, spending the evening in private with his most loyal and long-standing supporters – before planning to head to Boston’s Copley Square for a massive public rally.

Hundreds of supporters began gathering in the square hours before the first results began pouring in. They danced and cheered while it lightly rained, hoping that the rest of the country would follow Massachusetts’ lead and turn their rally into a celebration.

Those who gathered were treated to some entertainment from such musicians as Jon Bon Jovi, Sheryl Crow and James Taylor before the planned political speeches.

It was a historic backdrop in a square framed by the oldest free public library in the world, in the shadow of I.M. Pei’s glass John Hancock Tower, the 19th century Trinity Church, and the Old South Church, whose congregation was formed in 1669.

Kerry was wrapping up his campaign just yards away from the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the country’s oldest marathon, held every April.

“Kennedy and Kerry, I’ve always voted for them,” said Patricia Vernon, 40, Boston, who works in the computer industry.

“Kerry had done a good job for the people and not just himself.”

And she worried about terrorism and Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq.

“I feel less safe now because the rest of the world hates us,” Vernon said.

It had been a whirlwind of victories lately for Massachusetts residents – from the Patriots winning the Super Bowl earlier in the year to the Red Sox winning their first World Series since 1918.

Kerry’s most loyal fans were hoping he would make it a trifecta.

Nancy D’Arcy, 45, a paralegal from Chelmsford, said she wanted to make sure she was there at the Kerry rally to witness history. “I have never felt so strong about an election,” she said.

Across the board – from abortion rights to the likelihood the next president will appoint a new justice to the Supreme Court – “you name it, I’m worried about it,” she said.

Campaign spokeswoman Justine Griffin would not predict when Kerry would make his first appearance at Copley Square, but said it would not be earlier than 11 p.m.

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