Vermont

[justfollowingtheelections]

I doubt it has anything to do with the South.  Vermont is a state that favors small businesses (the only large employer I can think of is IBM in Burlington; I assume that Ben&Jerry is also a large employer but they're a local company).  Places where small businesses can flourish seem to be more liberal because they have more of a personality (as opposed to places where everyone shops at Walmart and eats at MacDonalds). 

It's also a very liberal place culturally, with artist-colonies and many neo-hippies, who enjoy their weed in public.  It's also quite secular and I think proximity to Quebec has played a role in their acceptance of different cultures (you can for example listen to Quebec radio stations in Vermont).

I don't think Vermont is as liberal as many believe it is, but I guess in national elections people realize how far to the right the GOP is.

[justfollowingtheelections]

Small business owners in general are more Republican as polls have shown, but what I meant was that places where small businesses have an easier time surviving due to the lack of multinationals tend to be more liberal.

Also, Vermont is a lot closer to Montreal (the cultural and population center of Quebec) than NH or ME.  People from Burlington who want to do something fun in the weekend go to Montreal, and a lot of people from Quebec visit Vermont during the summer.  I'm not saying this is a major reason why Vermont is liberal, but it plays a role along with a lot of other things.

[justfollowingtheelections]

It's a very progressive state and always has been.  Very, very liberal attitudes up there.  When the Democrats still struck the electorate as more "traditional", they lost Vermont by large margins every time.  Sure, Nixon had the 1968 Southern strategy, but the Democrats had not taken that turn into the "progressive" choice in America.  (Actually, Vermont was right around McGovern's national numbers in 1972 after a century-plus of voting WAY more Republican than the nation as a whole, and he was a progressive)

The evangelical Carter wasn't going to facilitate the switch.  But Mondale got VT to the nat'l average in 1984, it was D+2 in 1988, and it was al downhill for the GOP in VT from there as the GOP continued to drift rightward and the Dems realized that the liberals and progressives could be incorporated into their coalition. 

This doesn't really capture it, though--think the Proctor dynasty or Ralph Flanders. Nothing very progressive about that sort.

Well of course you get some habitual voting and recent Southern New England transplants.  I tend to think Vermont was always a place where they prefer the government stay out of your business and, for whatever reason, they don't interpret taxes and healthcare mandate as too much of an intrusion... but those social issues and things like the Patriot Act cross the line. 

And reading up on Flanders... I don't see anything so out there (for his time) in his platform that would dissuade Vermonters from voting like they had for over a century.  He was vehemently opposed to Communism, an ideology that in the 50s was tied to government control and totalitarianism, which goes to my point that Vermonters like the government to stay away unless it comes to practical matters like taxes and healthcare. 

One of the reasons taxes are not an issue is because there isn't much income inequality.  As for healthcare, I'm not sure why anyone would consider it an intrusion.  I was happy to read the other day that Shumlin will do everything he can to bring universal healthcare to Vermont.