‘Closer than people think.’ Mass. Senate primary between Markey, Moulton may (finally) be heating up.

Inside a modest yellow building that once housed an art museum, Massachusetts’ US Senate primary showed signs of life.

Read more Wednesday’s 11 high school sports takeaways, including a TMC meeting and 400th coaching win

Pop music blared from a second-floor room where a trio of digital-savvy campaign staffers worked to boost Representative Seth Moulton’s online presence in his dark-horse bid to oust Senator Ed Markey. Volunteers and staff clustered around tables making calls to voters as Evie, campaign manager Jeff Phaneuf’s 4-year-old husky-mix, padded from room to room.

Voters are “very enthusiastic,” Patricia Fitzgerald, a 79-year-old volunteer, said inside Moulton’s Salem campaignheadquarters. “They’re ready for change.”

Outside Moulton HQ, it wasa different story.

“I don’t even know who’s running,” said John DiBlasio, 44, of Lynn, as he sat on a bench eating a slice of Hawaiian pizzaindowntown Salem, a half-mile from Moulton’s campaign office and just a few hundred feet from the six-term congressman’s official district outpost.

Such is the state of what is (supposedly) Massachusetts’ most high-profile political race.

Much of the campaigning so far this cycle has been focused on winning over the Democratic die-hardsat this month’sstate party convention. Both campaigns have boasted of making regular appearances — Moulton launched a 40-stop “listening tour,” while Markey has spoken at rallies and celebrated grants with local officials —but often without generating headlines. Markey’scampaign has revolved around a strategy of avoiding acknowledging that he even has a challenger.

It’s a far cry from the high-profile 2020 race that pitted Markey, Massachusetts’ lesser-known senator, against a scion of the most famous political family in Massachusetts. That contest between Markey and then-Representative Joe Kennedy III divided Democratic elected officials in the state and across the country.By mid-February that year, they already held a televised debate. Even after the pandemic eclipsed daily life, Markey was catching headlines for, of all things, his clothes. His victory that September helped turn Markey into a progressive icon.

This year’s race has largelyhummed at a lower wattage despite some signs it’s starting to heat up. One recent Emerson College poll showed Moulton trailing Markey by just 5 percentage points among primary voters — an outlier compared to a recent Suffolk University/Globe poll and another fromthe University of New Hampshire, which both showed Markey with a double-digit lead and at least 15 percent of voters undecided.

And a Senate debate now set for June 16 won’t feature both major Democratic candidates. Moulton is set to face John Deaton, the likely Republican nominee, in a debate hosted by WBZ’s Jon Keller. Markey’s campaign manager, Cam Charbonnier, said the senator had already accepted other debate invitations “where he looks forward to debating any Democratic candidates who qualify for the ballot in the primary.” (Markey and Moulton have both agreed to a primary debate the Globe is hosting Aug. 20 with WCVB and WBUR).

Some in the business world are publicly backing Moulton — one of the few challengers to out-raise an opponent so far this election cycle — over the 79-year-old Markey.

“The race will be closer than people think,” said Essex County Register of Deeds Eileen Duff, a Democrat who plans to support Markey at the state party’s May convention.

“People are pissed off at everything in Washington, and at the same time they’re not paying attention to races like they used to,” she said. “That creates what could be a perfect storm for any newcomer.”

The thing is, Moultonisn’t a newcomer. He has been in Congress for close to a decade and once mounted a short-lived bid for president.But the 47-year-old Democrat has long been comfortable being an outsider in his own party.

“Seth is a lightning rod, and people love to hate him,” Duff said. “But he’s a Marine and he doesn’t care. He just keeps running into combat.”

His Senate campaign hasn’t been particularly combative, however. In an interview, Moulton reiterated a line he’s regularly used on the campaign trail: He respects Markey and believes both are “very aligned on policies,” butargued that a soon-to-be 80-year-old who has spent decades in Washington shouldn’t be seeking another six-year term in office.

“I just don’t think we can afford to wait six more years for new leadership,” he said.

Instead, he’s trained his fire on President Trump, and more recently, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, taking to cable news and social media to brand the former Fox News host “Ranger Pete,” a dig at his military credentials.

Read more Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scores 30, Thunder top Spurs in Game 2 of Western Conference finals

Both Moulton and Markey maintain that the voters they talk to are energized about the race.

That’s been borne out at town halls, rallies — even outside supermarkets where organizers waited with nomination papers to catch shoppers and collect the 10,000 signatures needed to get on the ballot, said Grace O’Sullivan, a regional field director for Markey’s campaign.

“People have been really excited to get involved in the campaign,” O’Sullivan said, pointing to one supporter who was recovering from surgery during the signature-gathering phase of the campaign. He put the nomination papers out on his porch, and made calls asking neighbors and friends to stop by and sign them.

For now, Markey said he isn’t sweating the thought of a tightening race. After all, an Emerson College poll released in May 2020 showed Kennedy leading Markey by 16 percentage points. (Markey ultimately prevailed by an 11-percentage-point margin.)

“I don’t ride the poller-coaster,” Markey saidin a phone interview. “If you spend all your time obsessing over polls, you stop focusing on the job you meant to do.”

Roughly three and a half months out fromthe Sept. 1 primary, neither candidate has seen a flood of fundraising befitting a nationally watched race, nor have they started airing ads on TV, though two outside groups have.

A super PAC backing Markey is pushing spots attacking Moulton for not being progressive enough. A dark-money group led by a longtime Moulton donor launched an ad campaign last month targeting Markey’s 50-year tenure in Washington.

Still, with Democrats looking to flip control of the House and Senate this November, and competitive races in nearby Maine and New Hampshire, it may be more challenging for candidates in a Democratic Senate primary in a safe Democratic seat to cut through the noise.

“People aren’t viewing it as an existential threat to democracy,” said Juan Jaramillo, a Democratic State Committee member. “And they’d probably rather be — and are — spending their resources and bandwidth[elsewhere].”

Unlike 2020, this year’s race hasn’t spilled onto social media in the way it did when much of the contest shifted online amid the pandemic. The online army of young, progressive activists who boosted Markey’s online persona then(while slinging insults at Kennedy) hasn’t reassembled with the same verve.

Adding another wrinkle to the race: an early, pre-Labor Day primary. This year’s Sept. 1 election “probably guarantees one of the lowest turnouts,” the state has seen in recent years, said David Paleologos, director of Suffolk University’s Political Research Center.

Typically, for a midterm state primary, fewer than 30 percent of registered eligible voters turnout, Paleologos said.

“When you look at that small subset, the candidates who are not only highly organized, but … who have secured large blocks of progressive voters, tend to do pretty well in that scenario,” he said.

But Moulton holds his own potential turnout advantage: Massachusetts’ only open congressional race this year is for the seat he’s vacating, a competition that could drive more voters out in a district that’s repeatedly reelected him.

“It could kind of juice the numbers on the North Shore,” said Keith Sonia, chair of the Beverly Democratic City Committee.

Read more EMass boys’ lacrosse: Players of the Week for May 13-19

Juice, it seems, is exactly what the race could use.