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

[RINO Tom]

Invasion of liberals from NY and MA

This is indeed a big factor. However, since the "invasion" largely happened a generation or two ago, Vermont's population cannot be divided neatly into locals vs. foreigners like is often stated.

There certainly is an element of long-time Republicans in VT being turned off by the Religious Right and becoming independents or even Democrats, but I've read things before about older Vermonters having signs for the "Take Back Vermont" movement, haha.  A mixture of both is the perfect combination to turn such a small state into a Democratic stronghold.

Then again, there are clearly enough people sympathetic enough to Republicans to do things like make the 2014 gubernatorial election pretty darn close.

[RINO Tom]

The same way that your state went from being so Democratic to so Republican. The ideologies of the parties began to shift, especially on racial and other social issues, the states became closer because of the deep partisan tendencies despite ideology changes, the states became very sympathetic to "liberal Republicans" and "conservative Democrats," and by the 90's and 2000's had completed the shift over to the other side.

Vermont may have become more liberal in recent years, but it has always been a liberal state. And keep in mind that being predominately white doesn't matter as much electorally in the northeast as it does in the south.

This is about right, except the two parties never "switched sides" on race

You've been corrected on that many times.

Do you know how simplistic and moronic it sounds to actually assert that two major political parties "switched" on anything at all?  LOL.

Democrats openly exploited the racial animosity in the South - without apology - from the party's foundation until the early 1920s.  Republicans openly advocated for curtailing that racial animosity - without apology - until the late 1800s.  By the 1920s, Blacks were INCREDIBLY frustrated with GOP leadership (many Black newspaper polls had findings of a slim majority of Blacks actually backing open segregationist Woodrow Wilson...), and all it took to dump the Party of Lincoln was some economic hardship that the Democrats were seen as fixers for.

Republicans in the 1930s felt ridiculously betrayed by the Black community, constantly alleging that the Democrats had "bought and paid for" Black votes, and that the Black community still "owed" the GOP for its actions in the 1800s.  With the Great Depression and World War II taking center stage politically, both the GOP and the Democrats paid literally no attention to civil rights from the 1930s until the late 1950s.  After Republicans saw THEIR civil rights laws being passed against Southern Democratic opposition and THEIR President enforcing Brown v. Board and they STILL lost the Black vote to Stevenson and his openly segregationist runningmate, Republicans (probably correctly) assumed that the Black vote was a lost cause.  Democrats tried to play both sides well into the 1970s, despite the myth that they just had this "coming to" moment in the 1960s where they were now the party of the moral high ground.

I highly suggest you check out the book "Republicans and Race: The GOP's Frayed Relationship With African-Americans, 1944-1970."  It's a good read and very informative.

If you want to simplify it down to a "switch," all you can really say is that yes, now Blacks vote Democrat and Southern Whites vote Republican ... anything beyond that that involves the term "switch" is utterly sophomoric.

[RINO Tom]

The parties switched platforms.

I don't know you well enough to know if you are typing that ridiculous sentence sarcastically or not, but the troubling thing about that myth is that it's so comforting to several different groups.

It is a nice comforting narrative to modern-day liberal Democrats, as (in their minds) it absolves the party of any racism in its past, all the while stealing any Republican accomplishments on the matter and forking it right over to the endless, always-right social treadmill of "liberalism."

It's comforting to Black voters, as it completely justifies the demographic group's switch from the GOP to the Democrats.  It's a lot more noble in the history books to paint it as the GOP turning on Black voters one day in a spat of coded racism than Blacks being forced to vote their economic interests three decades before the CRA/VRA.

It's also pretty comforting to Southern whites, as they can justify their ancestors' (whom they otherwise seem quite proud of) support of an openly racist party by hiding behind things like "states' rights" or "small government."  Of course, things like the Dred Scott case show that Southern Democrats didn't give a crap about states' rights and were willing to take any avenue possible to preserve White racial supremacy.

That pretty much just leaves Northern Republicans and Democrats who are true students of history/not completely ignorant (which, I'll say, describes most on this forum) to try to refute this fairy tale and tell the much more complicated story.

[RINO Tom]

Not really making a case here, but here is Vermont's population so you can see how and when it grew:

2010 - 625,741 (+ 2.80%)
2000 - 608,827 (+ 8.20%)
1990 - 562,758 (+ 10.00%)
1980 - 511,456 (+ 15.10%)
1970 - 444,330 (+ 14.0%)
1960 - 389,881 (+ 3.20%)
1950 - 377,747 (+ 5.20%)
1940 - 359,231 (- 0.10%)
1930 - 359,611 (+ 2.00%)
1920 - 352,428 (- 1.00%)

VT took a significant turn left in the 1960s (elected first Democratic governor ever) and an even bigger one in the '70s (elected first Democratic Senator ever and continued to go off and on with Republican and Democratic governors).  That matches up pretty well with huge population growths, and those people's children grew up knowing a mixed (i.e., not conservative) Vermont, and their kids are now growing up knowing a liberal Vermont.  There are other factors, sure, but it's not like the Vermonters who voted for all those Republicans in a row just decided, "I'm going to be a Democrat now."