Talk Elections

In 2004 Kerry was strong too, but President Obamas numbers in 2008 seems pretty impressive.

Well, it's a pretty long-term trend in Vermont, which is continuously trending democrat since 1988 (with the exception of 2000, but it was probably due to Nader).

Vermont has just been trending Democratic for a long time.

Ok, I also see an general trend since 1988, but these numbers still look awesome in my opinion. About plus 27 is extraordinary dominant. Altough Kerry was generally a weak candidate, he possibly
have had a kind of "New England bonus". By the way, excuse me for my bad American English, but I am originally from Germany.

This shows how Democratic relative to the national average Vermont was in Presidential elections since 1988:

1988: D+2
1992: D+3
1996: D+4
2000: D+2 (due to Nader)
2004: D+11
2008: D+15

Keep in mind that Obama won a greater nationwide % of the vote than Kerry did, and thus it is expected that he would do better percentagewise in Vermont. Vermont did trend a little Democratic between 2004 and 2008, though. In 2004, Vermont was 11% more Democratic than the national average, while in 2008, Vermont was 15% more Democratic than the national average.

Well, I highly doubt that with electoral-rich states like North Carolina and Ohio in play, McCain was willing to waste time in the Heavily Democratic, worth 3 electoral votes State of Vermont.

Thank you for the explanation, but why Vermont has trended so strong since 1988?

Vermont has been trending away from the Republican party for some time now. The party of war and corporate bailouts represented by Bush and McCain forced them into the arms of the Democrats.

To put it quickly, it's all about the GOP's change. Until the 1970's the Republicans were pretty different than how they are now. The "conservative revolution" of the 1980's and the 1990's basically disgusted Vermonters, who are generally rural/small town moderates. The religious conservatism and/or the radcal anti-welfare stances of most republicans were absolutely unappealing to them, wereas the democrats were seen as more moderates and less ideological (and were also remembered as the party of civil right, something who mattered in the North). Obviously, such trend happened gradually, as Vermonter used to vote strongly for republicans (as a reaction against pro-South democrats). so, it took more than 20 year for this move to be fully achieved.

In fact, it was often one of the most Republican states in the nation.

Vermont is generally an anti-war state. It swung Republican in 2000 when Bush campaigned on a 'humble' foreign policy, when it turned out to be a farce, Vermont swung the most against Bush of all states in 2004. Another example might be 1964, when Johnson campaigned as the candidate of peace, and Goldwater was painted as the candidate of war. Even though Vermont was heavily Republican, it voted against Goldwater because he was perceived as the 'pro-war' candidate.

So, Vermont doesn't like warmongers, that's pretty much how it goes.

It fits his left wing ideology.

Because Vermont rocks.

Vermont is also 98% white. Voting for a black is exotic and makes Vermonters feel all warm and fuzzy and tolerant.

Which apparantly doesn't apply to the Dakotas, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, and a host of other near all-white states that didn't back Obama because.....?

For that matter, New Hampshire's hardly an ethnic melting pot and gave Obama only 54% compared to 67% in Vermont.

All of those states swung Democratic in 2008.

Obama's margin in New Hampshire was held down by the few populous counties, of which there are none in Vermont. The two states have rather different political cultures and a Democrat starts off with a much stronger position in VT than in NH.

Merely being black isn't what won Vermont for Obama, but he had a much higher ceiling there than in a racially polarized state like Arkansas, or North Carolina for that matter.

As did most states.

That's true Libertas! Leave it to guilty white liberals to spoil it for conservatives.

1)Extremely strong anti-incumbency feeling.
2)The Democrat was a perceived liberal
3)The Democrat was perceived as the anti-war candidate.

True.  I think Bush Snr. and Clinton had something to do with it too.  I think that the GOP was killed in Vermont after Bush raised taxes on the wealthy.  Than after Clinton was elected, he proved that not all Democrats were hardcore liberals, which I think helped a fair amount.

Bush Sr.'s tax raise didn't affect the wealthy that much (it probably affected ordinary Americans more) and Reagan raised taxes on ordinary Americans numerous times, which didn't seem to hurt him in VT. Besides, VT isn't that wealthy. I think VT trended Democratic since 1988 due to the increasing social conservatism of the GOP and the increased social liberalism of the Democrats. I don't think it had much to do with economics since the GOP was arguably the more economically conservative party since the late 1970s, way before VT started trending Democratic.

Maybe, but I think the publicity of that event screwed the GOP over in Vermont.  Although I think the Dems would have picked it up anyways, I think Bush Snr. was the nail in the coffin, so to speak. 

I honestly don't think Bush Sr.'s tax raise had much to do with VT going Democratic. Most of the GOP distanced themselves from that tax raise (and from any tax raises, for that matter) soon afterwards, yet the GOP didn't make any gains in VT in 1994, 1996, or 2000. Besides, the conservatives that strongly oppose such tax raises are much less widespread in VT than in other states, and I doubt many of those conservatives would be willing to vote for Democrats for 20 years in a row. I still think it was social issues that swung VT to the Dems since 1992. Over the last 20 years, the GOP became much more socially conservative and the Dems became much more socially liberal, and VT was always much more socially liberal than the rest of the nation.

Vermont is a very social liberal state in the old Congregationalist tradition. Way back when, that meant support for abolition, then for prohibition, then for women's suffrage, causes championed primarily by the Republicans. As a result, Vermont was an incredibly tribally Republican state during the late 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries.

However, the Republican leadership abandoned social liberalism around the time of the Civil Rights movement with the adoption of the Southern Strategy (an attempt to exploit the national Democrats' support for civil rights to break the historical Democratic stranglehold on the South and appeal to conservative Southern whites). The unwind among social liberal voters from this was slow to occur, but it was clear that it was occurring by 1980, when ex-Republican John Anderson won much of the tribal New England Republican vote running as a social liberal independent.

This was accelerated during the 1980s by the collapse of the Dixiecrats, ultra-conservative Southern Democrats who had kept the party away from explicit endorsement of many social liberal positions. The surviving Dixiecrats were mostly defeated in the 1994 wave, and the Democrats became clearly defined as the party for social liberals.

As a result of this transformation of the Democratic Party, and the earlier transformation of the Republicans, Vermont, the epitome of social liberalism in the United States, swung dramatically from among the strongest Republican states in the 1970s to the strongest Democratic state today as its partisan voting moved in line with its ideology.

The main point is there : Vermont isn't a Dem State since 1992, but instead since 1980, when Reagan barely won the State while sweeping the country. Since then, Democrats have always done better there than nationwide. If its clear that the trend intensified in the 1990s, 1992 ceartainly isn't the tipping point.

Uh, yeah, Reagan won Vermont by a larger margin than he won many Southern states, so your argument pretty much fails. John Anderson's voters weren't going to vote for Carter.

How the fact that Southern States were closer than Vermont has anything to do with my point exactly



1. They certainly weren't going to vote massively for Carter, but certainly a fair share of them would have.
2. If you notice, Anderson's voting patterns are quite similar to those of the democrats today, so the fact he was so strong in VT is also a kind of hint of it becoming a democratic State.

Not really. It's more that they correlate with the distribution patterns of certain parts of the electorate that have swung heavily to the Democrats in recent decades.

I'm assuming Anderson's votes would have split evenly between Reagan and Carter, in which case Reagan would still have won by a 6 point margin, which is pretty good (considering the South was closer)

:P

In fact, Carter needed over 2/3rds of the Anderson vote to win Vermont, and I think that's pretty generous to Carter, even for such modern Democratic states like Vermont.

That seems pretty reasonable indeed. Still, Reagan won by 10 points nationwide so that makes Vermont D+4. This was the second time (after 1964) that VT was more democratic than the country, and since this time it has always been so.

It's unlikely that Carter, losing nationally by 10 points, would have done better than the 43.14% he got in Vermont in a winning election in 1976.

So even if you generously assume that there would be absolutely no swing away from the Democrats (highly unlikely), Carter should only have picked up about 4.73% from Anderson. Give the rest to Reagan, and Reagan narrowly outperforms Ford, winning Vermont by 11.4%.

Of course, considering that election was largely a referendum on Carter and his unpopularity, even giving him that much is probably too generous.


Antonio's claims fail on so many levels. You seriously didn't get how the Southern states' results totally undermined your "Vermont is Democratic since 1980 because Reagan barely won the State while sweeping the country" argument?

No, I still fail to see how Vermont is anyhow related with the South and how you can use that to deduce that my argument is "undermined". However, I'm not surprised you claim that.

I think what Libertas argument is that the margins in some of the Southern states were a bit too close for comfort while the margin in Vermont was by a bit more comfortable of a margin (between Carter and Reagan) undermines your thesis statement that "Vermont is Democratic since 1980 because Reagan barely won the state while sweeping the country".
I mean I really don't like Libertas abrasive style Antonio, but I think he kind of has a point here.  Reagan did win Vermont by almost 6% over Carter, I wouldn't call a victory margin of six points "barely winning" the state.  Sure, Reagan won more nationally than he did in the state, but SIX PERCENTAGE POINTS and 12,700 votes or so over your opponent in a state with a population a little bit above 500,000 is not "barely winning it".  I believe the correct wording would be that "Since 1980 the traditionally Republican state of Vermont has been shifting Democratic", to imply it was a Democratic state since 1980 is a bit well misleading.  And although Reagan was conservative, I can't see Vermont shifting towards the Southerner Carter, especially considering that the Election of 1980 was pretty much a referendum on Carter.  I hate to throw demographics in here, but somehow I doubt a New England state would decide to vote for the unpopular Southern incumbent in 1980 without the presence of Anderson.  Just because moderate Republicans disagreed with Reagan doesn't mean that they would jump ship and support the unpopular Democratic President Jimmy Carter.
Just a few thoughts, don't get mad.

Probably "barely" wasn't the right word, but my point remains.

Everybody can make any conjecture on what the results have been if Anderson hadn't run. It would be stupid to think Reagan would have won 59/38, and equally stupid to think it would have been a 53/44 Carter win. Besides that, almost everything is possible.

Now the point is that he ran, that the election ended up the way it ended up, and that Reagan's margin of victory was 6 against 10 for the country overall. Draw the conclusion you want to draw, but whether you like it or not, Vermont was a democratic State in 1980 relatively speaking. This is math.

In no Northeastern state did Carter 1980 outperform or even match his 1976 performance. You are seriously arguing that without Anderson, Carter would have lost none of the 43% of the vote he got in 1976, despite a 12-point national swing away from the Dems?

The way you're arguing it sounds like you think Carter would have done even better than the 43% he got when he won nationally in 1976. There's just no reason to believe Vermont would have bucked the national trend that hard. Anderson voters were just as unhappy with the Carter administration as Reagan voters. They were more likely to vote for Reagan or just stay home than to vote for Carter.


No, that's you deliberately misinterpreting math without putting things into context. Massachusetts and Washington D.C. trended Republican in 2008 relative to the national swing, I guess they're going to be GOP states now.

Ok, by your logic, Ohio, Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida were Republican in 2008, relatively speaking?

Indeed, how comes Vermont was the only State swinging to Carter in 1980 despite Anderson got similar scores in several other State ?



That's actually quite likely considering he would need to get only a third of Anderson voters. I don't know why you are so obstinated in considering that 100% of Anderson voters would have backed Reagan, but that's pretty ridiculous.
 


The one who is unable to understand the difference between a trend and a relative margin, the one who (voluntarily or not) misinterprets my reasoning, is you.



Of course they were. You disagree ?

You have to put statistics into context. Carter lost Vermont by double digits in 1976. That same election he won Massachusetts and Rhode Island, came very close in Maine, and fairly close in Connecticut. Obviously it's going to be a lot easier to cause a swing in Vermont with a candidate splitting the GOP vote. The Republican Party lost votes, but they didn't go to the Democrats. It didn't "swing to Carter".

You can't just look at a swing map and immediately draw conclusions. Every state is red on the 1976 swing map, but that wasn't because Carter was an excessively popular candidate.


Also it's worth noting that Vermont was still Carter's worst state in the Northeast in terms of vote share.

(Excepting New Hampshire, of course, which is not really comparable considering it's voting patterns have a long history of being at odds with the rest of New England.)

The question isn't whether they would have backed Reagan. The question is whether they would have voted for Carter. And the answer to that question is no.

You still have yet to put forth a compelling argument as to why Vermont would go against a 12 point national swing and give overwhelmingly unpopular Southern incumbent Carter a higher share of the vote than the 43% they gave him in 1976.

Vermont is part latte liberal, part dairy farmer, part college town, with a few industrial areas like Burlington etc. So it's really an ideal Democratic state, except for the fact that there are relatively few minorities there.

why would a dairy farmer be more inclined to vote Democrat?

Why would one be inclined to vote republican? But to answer milk subsidies and other farm subsidies.

How does that explain states like Nebraska, then. After all, on the state level you pretty much have to support farm subsidies to win there, from what I hear, but they also voted for emphatically anti-farm subsidies McCain.

Well they do elect ben nelson. But i wasnt saying that farmers in general vote dem just that one reason why they do is indeed subsidies, of course in vermont reasons maybe just old political traditions of being more liberal on many things as the reason. Also for what its worth i see more democratic signs at farms in my area, well non farm homes in the country side seem more republican.

Most people who live in the countryside aren't farmers! I've often wondered if the sort of industrial dairying you see in the U.S creates a small rural proletariat that votes in the logical direction, given subsidies etc.

Yes but Vermont whites are neo-hippie liberals.  That's the difference. 

Yeah, that would apply to Wisconsin as well.

Keep in mind, though..many of Vermont's  modern rural voters are certainly NOT proletariat. :P