How did Vermont go from being the most Republican state to the most Democratic

[Kristoffer]

(Long post coming up)


Vermont used to vote for Republican candidates in most elections for several reasons.

In indirect elections, like for the state legislature, it was because district drawing was biased towards the rural, more Republican counties with smaller communities. The state senate used to have district borders following county lines, giving large, populous counties (*cough* Chittenden *cough*) equal representation to places like Essex or Grand Isle.
This was not changed until the 1960's, with the SCOTUS ruling that the "one man, one vote" principle required district borders to not follow county lines unless representative of the inhabitants of the counties.

Another, much simpler way of explaining it is immigration. The 1980's and 1990's saw great migration from New York City, as well as the rest of the New England states, to Vermont. These people were from mostly liberal areas, shifting the state from the Republicans to the Democrats.

Yet another reason for the Green Mountain state to go blue (or for the sake of this site, red), is that Vermont have a history of social liberal Republicans, making the state more libertarian than most states controlled by the Republicans.

Even today, you can still see some Republicans winning elections. The lieutenant governor is a Republican (elected on a ballot separate from the governor's). Also, the last US congressmen from Vermont to be a Republican, left offices as late as 1991.
It's a bit more blurry with the US Senate, where Jim Jeffords took office as a Republican in 1989, became an independent in 2001, and finally left office in 2007. Ironically, the last national legislator from the Vermont Republican Party was replaced in 2007 by Bernie Sanders, a Democrat-backed, self-described democratic socialist.


Sources:
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont#Elections_to_federal_office
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_delegations_from_Vermont