Why didn't Maine and Vermont vote for FDR in 1936?

[Rockefeller GOP]

Why didn't ME and VT vote for FDR in the 1936 landslide? The states are/were always liberal and progressive but voted against on of the most liberal presidents in history.

Could FDR have won them and sweep all states?

This is patently false.

They only voted Dem once before, in 1912, when TR and Taft split the GOP vote and Wilson carried these states by a plurality. And before the 1920s, the GOP was the more liberal Party. Especially before the 1900s, the Dems were mostly a racist party.

LOL, again that is patently false, and you sound like an 18-year old who's taken one history class in his or her life.  Why is it so much easier to believe that two major political parties literally *switched* ideologies (I literally can't say that without laughing) than it is to believe some states drastically changed over time, especially when we have watched certain states do just that (CA, CO, VA, etc.) literally in the past 3 decades??

[Rockefeller GOP]

If you need an example of where Vermont fell politically, Calvin Coolidge was born there and was later Governor of Massachusetts. Moreover, it's not only just "muh Yankee Republicanism"; Maine had its own KKK! If you look at the type of folks who were elected from these respective states over the years, it changed drastically. You had very conservative Republicans being elected in Vermont up through the 1940's. It was only around then that the progressive/liberal wing of the VT GOP started to take over and you had guys like George Aiken representing Vermont as Republicans. In 1924, New England had the option of voting for a perfectly acceptable, non-Democrat "Progressive" candidate; they resoundingly chose not to.  I don't have the wealth of example that someone such as Mechaman* would have, so I'll stop there.

*Mechaman, by the way, appears to have forgotten his password and is too lazy to make a sock account in order to contact Dave to get his password back. Sorry.

Yeah, this perception that New Englanders (specifically upper New Englanders) have always been moderate to liberal and simply lost their affections for the Party of Lincoln are just wrong.  My grandparents always used to talk about how "true New Englanders" were conservative.  Sure, many were pro-choice and pro-civil rights, but (at the time) they didn't see those as necessarily liberal positions.

[Rockefeller GOP]

Interesting that in both states support for FDR peaked in 1940.

My guess is wartime support/Rally Around the Flag.  In the period following the Civil War until the counterculture revolution, New England was extremely unionistic and patriotic.

[Rockefeller GOP]

These states were more Republican for historical and structural reasons. You could switch the question: Why did all former confederate states, which were/are actually conservative, vote for the progressive FDR in 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944, although the GOP candidates were more conservative?

Again, this is an incorrect, fairly tale simplification of history meant to make modern "progressives" look and feel good.

[Rockefeller GOP]

These states were more Republican for historical and structural reasons. You could switch the question: Why did all former confederate states, which were/are actually conservative, vote for the progressive FDR in 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944, although the GOP candidates were more conservative?

Excellent point!

You're referring to voting patterns. They don't switch up easily—not even in a two-party contest when it would seem like the states' electorates should be able to keep score over the candidates' leanings.

No state has been loyal more times to the Republican Party, since they first competed in 1856, than Vermont. It carried Republican in every election from 1856 to 1988 with exception of Barry Goldwater in 1964; and 1964 was a preview of how the map would realign because Goldwater became the first Republican to carry Georgia (and that made Lyndon Johnson the first winning Democrat elected without Georgia). Five of Goldwater's six states were on what was the turf of the Democrats: Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and the two deep-south neighbors Alabama and Mississippi, which come off as the historical antithesis of Vermont. (Take a look at just how often Alabama and Mississippi, on one side, and Vermont, on the other side, agreed in given presidential elections! Since the Republicans-vs.-Democrats duopoly began in 1856, just five times during this period have the trio of states agreed: 1872, 1972, 1980, 1984, and 1988. And they were all from elections in which the winners carried more than 80 percent of the nation's states.)

Vermont did not carry for Franklin Roosevelt because it was regularly rock solid with the Republicans. Had Roosevelt been able to dislodge Vermont from the Republicans' grip…he would have ended up with all 48 states with his blowout re-election of 1936.

The electorates were perfectly able to keep score.  Your theories are trash.

[Rockefeller GOP]

These states were more Republican for historical and structural reasons. You could switch the question: Why did all former confederate states, which were/are actually conservative, vote for the progressive FDR in 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944, although the GOP candidates were more conservative?

Excellent point!

You're referring to voting patterns. They don't switch up easily—not even in a two-party contest when it would seem like the states' electorates should be able to keep score over the candidates' leanings.

No state has been loyal more times to the Republican Party, since they first competed in 1856, than Vermont. It carried Republican in every election from 1856 to 1988 with exception of Barry Goldwater in 1964; and 1964 was a preview of how the map would realign because Goldwater became the first Republican to carry Georgia (and that made Lyndon Johnson the first winning Democrat elected without Georgia). Five of Goldwater's six states were on what was the turf of the Democrats: Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and the two deep-south neighbors Alabama and Mississippi, which come off as the historical antithesis of Vermont. (Take a look at just how often Alabama and Mississippi, on one side, and Vermont, on the other side, agreed in given presidential elections! Since the Republicans-vs.-Democrats duopoly began in 1856, just five times during this period have the trio of states agreed: 1872, 1972, 1980, 1984, and 1988. And they were all from elections in which the winners carried more than 80 percent of the nation's states.)

Vermont did not carry for Franklin Roosevelt because it was regularly rock solid with the Republicans. Had Roosevelt been able to dislodge Vermont from the Republicans' grip…he would have ended up with all 48 states with his blowout re-election of 1936.

The electorates were perfectly able to keep score.  Your theories are trash.

You’re pathetic.

That description is better suited to someone who has devoted a comical amount of time to turning Presidential elections into some mathematical formula, dependent on two major political parties actually switching platforms, something only a true idiot would believe.

[Rockefeller GOP]

All this talk about Yankee/New England Protestant voting habits, yet curiously less discussion regarding the influence that Catholic immigrants  (French/French Canadians and Irish, primarily) and their descendants - or indeed, more historically working-class populations in general -  have had on the political culture of northern New England.

(There's this politician from Vermont...a self-described democratic socialist, of working-class Jewish background and originally from Brooklyn. You might have heard of him....)

That was the Democratic base in those days. But that was more in New York, Massachusetts, and the like. NH, Vermont, and Maine didn't have quite as many of those groups until recently. And I like how you tried to bring Bernie Sanders up in a discussion about Vermont's voting patterns in 1936. Boy, there were few Brooklyn Jews in Vermont at that time. Even today there aren't a majority.

French Canadian and Irish Catholics have been in northern New England for a long time...

Anyway, I was really referring to the change in the politics of these states since the 1930s.

Well, VT and ME never had (inverse) Deep South-type results.  Ever.  They always had RELATIVELY respectable Democratic floors if you look at old Presidential results.  I'm guessing the folks you mentioned are largely responsible for that.