[G]ood news for Gov. Phil Scott in that new poll, right?
Well, maybe not so right.
Yes, if the focus is just on whether he’ll be re-elected – a reasonable focus two weeks before the election – it was pretty good news. A 14-point lead over the nearest competitor is about as good news for a candidate as it gets.
But that 14-point lead wasn’t anything like 55-to-41, or even 50-to-36. It was 42-to-28.
A big lead. Not a rousing vote of confidence.
The VPR-Vermont PBS Poll indicated that 22 percent of voters weren’t sure or had not yet made up their minds. If all of them decide to vote for Christine Hallquist, Scott’s Democratic challenger, she’d win.
Hardly likely. That kind of switch is a mathematical possibility but a political absurdity.
Still, the results are not all that cheery for the governor. Scott is an appealing gentleman who has run a scandal-free administration that has done what he said it would do: blocked (with one tiny exception) any tax and fee increases. Usually that combination – personal integrity, campaign promise kept – gets an incumbent an approval rating well above 50 percent and a hefty majority of voters in favor of his re-election.
But this poll gives him just a 45 percent approval rating, with 26 percent disapproving and 22 percent not sure.
His big lead, then, seems based more on Hallquist’s weakness than on Scott’s strength. For a Democrat in this Democratic state to be attracting just a smidgen more than a quarter of the vote means she has not been able to mobilize her own base.
Not a big surprise. She has neither held nor run for political office. She was not very well-known when the campaign began. She never raised much money, not enough so far to pay for one television commercial. She has run a credible campaign. She gets her points across; she’s for raising the minimum wage, requiring family and medical leave and somehow getting high-speed internet service to every Vermont household.
But she hasn’t gotten them across to nearly enough voters, perhaps because she has not been able to project herself to many voters. Her policy positions appear popular. The poll showed that by a 46-to-34 percent plurality, Vermonters approve requiring 12 weeks of family leave, even at a cost of a $70 payroll tax. That’s something she favors and Scott opposes. So is a minimum wage increase, which was not mentioned in this poll but which also enjoys strong support in the state.
But Hallquist has not been able to translate that policy agreement into support for her candidacy. A candidate need not be charismatic to win. But perhaps a candidate does have to have a little more pizzazz than Hallquist has shown. This is not a character flaw. No one is born knowing how to run for office. It’s an acquired skill. Hallquist does not seem to have acquired it.
So it looks like the governor can expect a second term, but perhaps a rocky one. The Legislature is probably going to be at least as Democratic as the one it replaces. This does not mean it is likely to be “veto proof.” Vermont Democrats are not a monolith, and unless they have a huge majority in the House of Representatives, chances are there would be enough defectors on controversial issues to sustain a Scott veto even if more than 100 of the members (that’s how many votes override a veto) are Democrats.
But especially if the Democrats increase their legislative majorities, they are going to be emboldened to resist many of the governor’s initiatives. They can read the results of this and other polls showing strong support for some of their positions, and for the paltry 24-percent Vermont approval rating for President Donald Trump.
Scott’s 45-percent approval rating is not terrible. Still, it means he enters his second term with the support of fewer than half the voters, with a Legislature dominated by the other party, with his own party in the Statehouse weaker because House Minority Leader Don Turner of Milton, a capable legislator, quit to run for lieutenant governor.
Like every other Republican except for Scott, Turner is behind, too, trailing incumbent Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman by a 47-30 percent margin. Turner, who has a TV ad up (Zuckerman does not) could close that gap. Closing it enough to win seems unlikely.
Closing the much larger gaps for all the other statewide Republican candidates is beyond unlikely. Aside from Phil Scott, the Vermont Republican Party is moribund. That won’t make Scott’s second term any easier, either. (Not that his first term was all that easy; seekers of an easy life do not run for governor).
Because Scott’s poll support was well under 50 percent, there has already been some speculation that he might get less than 50 percent of the vote. Under Vermont’s constitution, that means the Legislature would elect the governor.
Could a Democratic Legislature choose Hallquist?
No. First of all, Scott will almost surely get a majority because there is no viable third candidate to take enough votes from the top two. There are five other candidates. Four of them are each getting 1 percent; the fifth not even that.
But if by some fluke Scott ends up with, say, 49 or 48 percent of the vote, but still several points more than Hallquist, the lawmakers will re-elect the governor. To do otherwise would be an act of mind-boggling political foolishness. Vermont Democrats have their weak moments; they aren’t that dense.
