When would you say that Vermont started moving to the left?

[sg0508]

This state was traditionally a GOP stronghold for nearly the entire 20th century, only being lost in 1964 and then of course in 1992-2000.

Some may think it started with Bill Clinton in 1992 when George Bush made his infamous gaffe about having no clue how the economic recession affected works in the northeast, but personally, I think it started in 1980.  That was the first year that the conservative wing of the party really had some mustard and John Anderson almost took enough votes to put Jimmy Carter over the top on Ronald Reagan (44% to 38%). 

In the 1984 landslide, Reagan ran below his national average there, winning 57-41%.  Bush barely held Dukakis off in 1988 and never since has the state been competitive (although in 2000, Nader helped Bush carry a few counties).

[minionofmidas]

The last time it "trended" Republican for a second presidential election in a row was in 1952, fwiw. It had one of the hugest swings of all in 1964 (unsurprisingly), and never really fully swung back.
Republicans like to tell themselves that Vermont was swamped with outofstaters from New York and that's what did them in, but of course Vermont has the third highest rate of born in staters in the entire Northeast (behind Pennsylvania and Maine). Not saying improved communication with / increasing influence of New York wasn't a large part of what happened - of course it was. But what happened is something much more complicated than just a hippie infestation. More an osmosis of old Vermont Republican values (which don't gel with the current Southern Conservative dominated image of the party) and the Newyork infusion.

[Franzl]

Personally, I don't think Vermont has really trended all that much to the left.

It's just that the GOP has made itself unelectable there.

[Obnoxiously Slutty Girly Girl]

Vermont didn't leave the Republican Party. The party left it.

[Free Palestine]

Vermont didn't change.  The parties changed, and because of this, the general consensus of who was the "lesser of two evils" changed.

[Scam of God]

Quite simply: the GOP became the Southern Party.

[rbt48]

Vermont didn't change.  The parties changed, and because of this, the general consensus of who was the "lesser of two evils" changed.

I'd argue that Vermont has changed quite a lot over the past 50 years.  Yes, Vermont Republicans have always been the more progressive type, especially on social issues (e.g., slavery and abolition, civil rights), but on economic and defense issues, they were more in line with the Republican mainstream than you would sense from reading most of the posts here.

I would say the 1958 midterm elections marked the turning point when the state as a whole began its leftward drift.  In 1956, Eisenhower actually slightly increased his huge margin of victory over 1952.   Except for the abberation of 1972, the leftward trend has been rather consistent.  All this in a state that did not select a Democratic elector until 1964 and has not gone Republican since 1988.

http://members.cox.net/rbt48/weather/Presidential_Elections/Vermont_pv.pdf

[Antonio the Sixth]

I'd say that it started in the 1950's, though Franzl's and Fallenmorgan's comments are true and probably more important.

[Rob]

Its Democratic trend began in the first decades of the twentieth century, as the WASP majority began to shrink; French-Canadians, Irish, and Italians, Catholics who voted Democratic, had more kids than the English Protestants.

Democratic presidential percentages, 1924-1940.

1924: 16%
1928: 33% (the tipping point- Catholics registered to vote for Smith, but didn't go away afterward)
1932: 41%
1936: 43%
1940: 45%

Then, of course, the steady rightward drift and "Dixiefication" of the national Republican Party, symbolized by the nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964. A candidate who is adored by whites in the Mississippi Delta is not likely to appeal to most whites in New England.

The final straw may have been the nomination of Ronald Reagan in 1980- note that Vermont was Reagan's seventh-worst state in the nation and John Anderson's second-best. It's easy to ignore, because in that national landslide (and those of 1984 and 1988), it went Republican anyway, but it was significant nonetheless.

Today the old ethnocultural divide is gone. Obama carried 58 percent of Protestants, 63 percent of Catholics, and 81 percent of atheists and agnostics.

[Derek]

In 1988 it would've gone to the Dems if they had a half decent candidate. It's really hard to say though. West Virginia did the opposite thing in 2000. It went from being Massachusetts to being Kansas between 1996 and 2004.

[Bo]

1928

[Joe Republic]

Here are Vermont's percentage margins of victory relative to the national margin:

1916: R+30
1920: R+26
1924: R+37
1928: R+17
1932: R+34
1936: R+37
1940: R+20
1944: R+22
1948: R+29
1952: R+32
1956: R+29
1960: R+17
1964: D+10
1968: R+9
1972: R+3
1976: R+13
1980: D+4
1984: D+1
1988: D+4
1992: D+10
1996: D+14
2000: D+9
2004: D+23
2008: D+30

[Antonio the Sixth]

Nice 180° switch.

[rebeltarian]

When people from Masshole started moving there and having kids. 

VT has evolved into a small, homogenous swath of high-end white people.  Most minorities in VT are babies adopted from Africa.