2020 Presidential Elections State-by-State Guide: Bernie Sanders is a favorite to sweep Vermont
State:
VERMONT
Primary dates:
March 3, 2020 (Tuesday)
Type: Open
Democratic delegates: 23 (16 pledged, 7 super)
Republican delegates: 17
Governor:
Phil Scott (Republican)
Senators:
Patrick Leahy (D) & Bernie Sanders (Independent)
Representative: 1
Peter Welch (D)
Electoral college votes: 3
Hillary Clinton won all of them in 2016
How Vermont has voted in presidential elections in the past
The Green Mountain State was the first to get admitted in the Union after the original 13 colonies and has participated in every election since 1792. Between the founding of the modern GOP in 1854 till 1988, Vermont votes for Republican presidential candidates in every election with the exception of 1964 when Lyndon Baines Johnson had won. Since 1992, Vermont has turned blue with the Democrats winning the state in seven consecutive polls till 2016. Last time, Hillary Clinton got a thumping win over Donald Trump by 26 percent to bag all three electoral votes.
Vermont is a safe blue state
Vermont is a safe Democratic state but despite local hero Bernie Sanders representing the state to the Congress for a long time and Hillary winning it easily in the 2016 presidential election, there are also other layers in the story.
In the 19th century, Vermont was the most Republican-dominated state in the nation, voting for the red party in every presidential election between 1856 and 1960. In 1936, Vermont was the only state other than Maine to have voted against Franklin Delano Roosevelt. For three decades after that the state’s Yankee Protestant Republicans proved stronger than its French Canadian and Irish Catholic Democrats. But as newcomers started entering the state, Vermont was divided politically along lines of liberal, highly educated newcomers and the conservative, less educated, old residents. A key figure of the state’s politics was Howard Dean, a Yale-educated man who arrived in Vermont and became its lieutenant governor and then the governor. He had also joined the presidential contest in 2003 but although he lost, his opposition to the Iraq War saw Vermont going left on the US’s political spectrum for the first time. The legacy has been carried forward by the likes of Sanders. The state also came to be known for its liberal stance on foreign policy and cultural issues, except those like gun control.
It is not that the GOP thereafter vanished from the liberal state but its members in Vermont became more moderate in comparison to the national GOP.
The recent success of the GOP in Vermont includes Scott’s winning the open-seat governorship in 2016. Hillary also did worse than former president Barack Obama did here in 2012, especially in the rural countries.
Vermont and 2020 presidential election
There is little doubt over the fact that Sanders will be bagging Vermont in the Super Tuesday primary on March 3. In a poll by Vermont Public Radio, the socialist leader was leading the list with 51 percent votes while Pete Buttigieg was a distant second with 13 percent. According to a forecast made by FiveThirtyEight, the veteran was leading with 99 percent of the votes! In the 2016 primary in Vermont, Sanders beat Hillary by over 72 percent votes. In the presidential election, too, Sanders finished third with over five-and-half percent of votes.
In the Republican camp, Trump narrowly beat John Kasich in the 2016 primary (by around two percent) but is a favorite to win the GOP primary this time which is a lop-sided field in his favor. However, Governor Scott endorsed Trump’s opponent in the primary Bill Weld to reiterate his little admiration for the president. Scott has been a consistent critic of the president since 2016 and also supported the recent impeachment query against him. But the Trump campaign in Vermont also takes confidence from the fact that pro-president voice Deb Billado has been re-elected as the chairperson of the state’s GOP and has vowed to work with the local party leaders in the state to strengthen the red party’s base. Billado’s strong pro-Trump words though have also seen divisions among the Vermont Republicans.