MONTPELIER, Vermont — The Green Mountain State is turning a shade of purple.
It may seem a shocking political development for one of America’s most liberal states, a seeming blue bastion, or something further left, that has elected socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) since 2006, and as a House member for 16 years prior.
However, like other strongly Democratic areas of the United States, Vermont voters have recently expressed displeasure with rising crime, stagnant economic growth, and a range of other problems.
In 2024, even though Democratic nominee Kamala Harris easily won the small, rural state over President Donald Trump, voters ousted more than two dozen Democratic legislators. With Trump winning a second, nonconsecutive term while sweeping all seven swing states, Vermont voters said they, too, felt Democrats had not addressed an affordability crisis.
Harris, then the vice president under President Joe Biden, won Vermont over Trump, 64%-32%. That was a bit of a drop in support for the Democratic ticket over 2020, when Biden clocked Trump, 66%-31%.
Lower down the ballot, in a sweeping show of dissatisfaction, voters cast out more than two dozen Democratic state lawmakers. The outcome eliminated Democratic two-thirds supermajorities in the Vermont legislature. Democrats in Montpelier, the nation’s smallest state capital at about 8,000 people, now can’t easily override vetoes by Gov. Phil Scott (R-VT).
Democrats lost more legislative seats in Vermont in 2024 than in any other state. In the 150-member state House, Republicans now hold 56 seats, instead of 37 two years ago. In the 30-member state Senate, GOP ranks grew from seven to 13.
Even Sanders took an electoral hit. He easily won reelection over a little-known Republican rival, about 63%-32%. However, that was a shade under Harris’s presidential race win, and down from prior Senate races, when Sanders had won up to 71%.
Sanders, 83, has long been the symbol of U.S. socialism, such as it is, though there’s limited appeal, to put it mildly, for his advocacy of confiscatory tax rates and government-funded healthcare, which critics contend would lead to rationing for patients and a range of other problems.
Still, Sanders has always had a certain political attraction on the far Left. When Sanders lost his 2016 Democratic presidential primary challenge to Hillary Clinton, despite having never been elected as a member of the party, he was down nearly 50 points in some polls. By the time Sanders arrived at the Democratic National Convention, he had won contests in 22 states, along with 46% of the pledged delegates. He had attracted massive crowds to the point that, for a time, he had a Secret Service team protecting him.
Sanders, in his 2020 Democratic bid, again railed against the “billionaire class” and urged a “political revolution.” But that campaign also showed the limits of his appeal. While outlasting a string of prominent senators, governors, and other Democratic figures, when it was essentially a two-person race, Democratic primary voters made a pragmatic pick in Biden. That proved a wise political choice, at least in the short term, because Biden beat Trump that fall. The Republican returned to office with his 2024 win over Harris, who took Biden’s place on the ticket when it became clear that at age 82, he wasn’t up for another four years as president.
Sanders most recently joined left-wing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in a speaking tour blasting “the oligarchy” and doing the political equivalent of singing socialist favorite tunes. While the pair generated large crowds in spots, Democratic strategists interested in winning the White House in 2028, and first capturing a House majority in 2026, are wary of their efforts.
Tough economic times
Frustration by Vermont residents over inflation, taken out on legislative Democrats in the 2024 elections, is hardly surprising because Vermonters, like people across the rest of the country, have struggled with persistent price hikes since the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic a half-decade ago. A December 2024 report by the Joint Economic Committee to Congress laid bare the extent of price hikes across northern New England.
“The average household in Vermont is paying $980 more per month to purchase the same basket of goods and services as in January 2021,” according to the document, covering granular household costs in all 50 states. The Joint Economic Committee, one of four panels in Congress with members of the House and Senate, is responsible for reporting the current economic condition of the United States and for making suggestions for improvement to the economy.
“Compared to January 2021, the average household in Vermont is spending $117 more on food per month,” the report reads. “This is $10 more each month than one year ago. Cumulatively, the average household in Vermont has spent $3,404 more on food due to inflation since January 2021.”
Housing, energy, and transportation costs are also up substantially. And that’s on top of a Vermont economy facing demographic challenges, like a major segment of the state population likely to age out of the workforce in the coming years.
“One in four Vermont residents is over the age of 60 (28% or 183,000 adults), making it the 4th oldest population in the country,” the Vermont Department of Health noted in a September 2023 report. “Since 2001, Vermont has experienced a decreasing youth population and an increasing older adult population. An increasingly older adult population creates new challenges and emerging health risks.”
Plus, the state’s longtime left-wing tilt is starting to catch up with it in the form of sluggish economic growth.
“Next-door New Hampshire trumpeted its low taxes and aversion to government regulation, attracting right-leaning migrants from Massachusetts and elsewhere to settle spanking-new developments,” the 2024 Almanac of American Politics noted. “But Vermont, proclaiming its desire to preserve the environment and the past, attracted liberals from New York and elsewhere who were willing to pay higher taxes and higher prices and submit to tough environmental restrictions for the privilege of living in a pristine setting.”
Popular Republican governor
Vermont long had an image as a hippie haven of sorts, home to Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, with its avid social justice warrior fan base. Yet Vermont, at about 647,000 people, the second-least-populous state after Wyoming, was never quite the blue monopoly depicted by critics.
Outside of Burlington, with a population of about 45,000 people and where Sanders was mayor from 1981 to 1989, and several smaller liberal cities, a strong conservative tradition endures. Voters elected Scott in 2016 and have returned him to office every two years since. Vermont and neighboring New Hampshire have two-year gubernatorial terms compared to four years in the other 48 states.
Scott is among the most popular governors in the country, polls repeatedly show. In November 2024, he won 71% of the vote against a little-known Democratic opponent.
Scott, 66, is a longtime businessman and a champion stock car racer. He has significant government experience as a former state senator and Vermont lieutenant governor.
Scott is a throwback of sorts to Vermont Republicans of a more centrist stripe, such as the late Sen. George Aiken, whose food allotment bill of 1945 was a forerunner of the federal food stamp program, or the late Sen. Robert Stafford, known for the creation of the eponymous federal student loan program. Both laws, whatever their merits, were hardly conservative endeavors.
To be sure, Scott can’t distance himself too much from his largely liberal constituency. He voted for Biden in 2020 and Harris in 2024.
Once settled into the governorship for a few years, Scott found an equilibrium of halting far-left Democratic measures but not going too far right himself.
“In his fourth two-year term, Scott broke with almost every major position of the national Republican Party,” according to the 2024 Almanac of American Politics. “After the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Scott quickly called for Trump to resign or be removed from office. He signed a bill to conduct general elections entirely by mail, following passage by a wide bipartisan majority in the legislature.”
A year later, “When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Scott said he was ‘deeply disappointed’ and said he was supporting that fall’s ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution,” per the Almanac of American Politics.
More of a two-party system
Due to the big 2024 Republican wins, Scott has considerable legislative leverage to enact his agenda or at least force Democrats to make some compromises.
That’s a major change from just a year ago. Of the eight bills Scott vetoed between April and June 2024, Democratic supermajorities overrode six and enacted the proposals into law. That included a property tax hike that averaged 14% statewide, and creation of an “overdose prevention” center in Burlington.
Scott has, in recent months, talked up the need to overhaul the school funding system, with a goal of reining in tax increases. He also wants to streamline Vermont’s strict rules for building new housing amid surging demand.
Scott recently flexed his political muscles by blocking a state policy that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In 2022, Vermont signed on to a California-based rule that requires 35% of all vehicles delivered to car dealers to be zero-emission, starting in model year 2026. On May 13, Scott issued an executive order that effectively halts that rule by directing state enforcement agencies not to issue fines or other penalties for noncompliance.
“I continue to believe we should be incentivizing Vermonters to transition to cleaner energy options like electric vehicles,” Scott said in a written statement. “However, we have to be realistic about a pace that’s achievable. It’s clear we don’t have anywhere near enough charging infrastructure, and insufficient technological advances in heavy-duty vehicles, to meet current goals.”
The order also postpones Vermont’s compliance with another California rule that creates zero-emission mandates for heavy-duty trucks. Seventeen states have adopted the California standards.
Trump remains unpopular in Vermont
The political middle ground of Scott and the emboldened state legislative Republican minority doesn’t mean Vermont’s far-left elements are gone. Sanders’s Senate counterpart, Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT), is a fierce Trump critic. So is the House member who replaced Welch in that chamber after the 2022 elections, Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT).
From the governor’s office, Scott has taken a skeptical eye toward a major Trump administration policy plank, its widespread imposition of tariffs on foreign countries. The U.S.-Canada border stretches for 90 miles between Vermont and the province of Quebec to its north, with copious trade and jobs now threatened.
Scott, on May 6, joined a group of Northeast governors inviting Canadian leaders to meet in person to talk tariffs. The group said they want to preserve their relationship with Canada amid Trump’s tariffs. The tariffs are making life increasingly more expensive for people and businesses in the region, Scott, the only Republican to sign, said in the letter, along with the Democratic governors of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island.
And Vice President JD Vance found out about the Trump administration’s unpopularity firsthand in late February while visiting a local ski resort. The Vance family ski trip at the Sugarbush Resort in Warren, Vermont, came less than 24 hours after his explosive Oval Office exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Vance spoke up toward the end of an already-heated White House clash between Trump and Zelensky over continued U.S. support for Ukraine in its defensive war against Russia.
Hundreds of people heckled Vance’s presence while holding pro-Ukraine signs. The protesters carried signs calling Vance “Nazi scum,” accusing him of being a “traitor” and telling him to “go ski in Russia.”
Vance pushed back on X.
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“These people are such idiots,” Vance wrote. “We had a great time during our weekend in Vermont. We barely noticed the protesters and almost everyone we met was kind and generous. And Vermont is beautiful.”
The episode reflected Vermont’s mixed political pedigree. While Vermont isn’t going to become Alabama 2.0, a deep-red conservative bastion, it’s no longer the crunchy liberal haven of political lore — if it ever was.