The state’s mapping gurus at Stone Environmental, a Montpelier-based GIS specialty company, has produced a set of town-by-town election results for each of the 2012 statewide races that is now available on the Vermont Secretary of State’s website.
The maps are a fascinating window on voters’ shifting political allegiances. Though certain races were all blue (Democratic) all the time, Vermonters still split the ticket.
In the presidential race, Vermont was the first state that was declared for President Barack Obama — only two towns voted for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Still, percentage wise it was a lot closer — Obama had 66 percent of ballots cast, while Romney had 31 percent.
Meanwhile, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who had a $7 million war chest, appears to have won every municipality in the state, although results are not yet in for Moretown from the Secretary of State’s office, according to David Healy of Stone Environmental. (Independents get a sunny yellow hue in this mapping exercise.) He beat his Republican challenger John MacGovern by 71 percentage points.
Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., also won handily, with only three red towns coming into view, and garnered 72 percent of the vote.
Voters in a number of towns that went blue for Obama and Welch and yellow for Sanders turned Republican red when it came to local elections and their choice for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, state auditor, state treasurer, and the Vermont Senate and the House of Representatives (where orange Progressive wins and more yellow Independents show up). The state’s conservative strongholds are where they’ve always been: Orange, Franklin and Rutland counties and the Northeast Kingdom.
The reddest map of them all? The lieutenant governor’s race. Phil Scott, a Republican from Washington County, only lost about 37 towns out of a total of roughly 250. Scott, it turns out, was the only statewide win for the GOP in an election year in which the Democrats swept the top races and the Legislature. In the House races, Dems extended their reach, while in the Senate, the Progressives gained one more seat.
All of the maps, created by Charlie Hofmann at Stone, can be found on the Secretary of State’s website.
Click here for tallies and percentage results.
President
U.S. Senate
U.S. Representative
Governor
Peter Shumlin, the incumbent Democrat, won by 57.8 percent against Republican Randy Brock, who got 37.55 percent of ballots cast. Shumlin lost big in the sparsely populated Northeast Kingdom and held his own in the GOP zones of Rutland, Orange and Franklin counties.
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Lieutenant governor
State treasurer
In the most contentious race of the election season, Democrat Beth Pearce won by a much wider than pundits expected with 52 percent of the vote. Her opponent, Republican Wendy Wilton came in with 40.72 percent. Wilton, however, had broad support in the Rutland County area that stretched into a section of Addison County.
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State auditor
Doug Hoffer, a Democrat/Progressive, won by 54 percent of the vote against Vince Illuzzi, a Republican senator from the Northeast Kingdom. Illuzzi dominated his home turf but was unable to translate his popularity there into votes in the Southern part of the state and Chittenden County, where Hoffer is well known from his previous race for the seat in 2010.
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