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

[Badger]

(Long post coming up)


Vermont used to vote for Republican candidates in most elections for several reasons.

In indirect elections, like for the state legislature, it was because district drawing was biased towards the rural, more Republican counties with smaller communities. The state senate used to have district borders following county lines, giving large, populous counties (*cough* Chittenden *cough*) equal representation to places like Essex or Grand Isle.
This was not changed until the 1960's, with the SCOTUS ruling that the "one man, one vote" principle required district borders to not follow county lines unless representative of the inhabitants of the counties.

Another, much simpler way of explaining it is immigration. The 1980's and 1990's saw great migration from New York City, as well as the rest of the New England states, to Vermont. These people were from mostly liberal areas, shifting the state from the Republicans to the Democrats.

Yet another reason for the Green Mountain state to go blue (or for the sake of this site, red), is that Vermont have a history of social liberal Republicans, making the state more libertarian than most states controlled by the Republicans.

Even today, you can still see some Republicans winning elections. The lieutenant governor is a Republican (elected on a ballot separate from the governor's). Also, the last US congressmen from Vermont to be a Republican, left offices as late as 1991.
It's a bit more blurry with the US Senate, where Jim Jeffords took office as a Republican in 1989, became an independent in 2001, and finally left office in 2007. Ironically, the last national legislator from the Vermont Republican Party was replaced in 2007 by Bernie Sanders, a Democrat-backed, self-described democratic socialist.


Sources:
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont#Elections_to_federal_office
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_delegations_from_Vermont

Finally! A smart, articulate, non-trollish newbie!

Sorry, we've had a bit of a drought lately. Or at least the loudest recent newbies have generally been god-awful.

Please post more.

[Badger]

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.

Finally, a breath of fresh air on this forum!

Agreed!

Holy $Hit, Don1 you're still alive ?