Jon Margolis is a political columnist for VTDigger
How come, if Vermont is such a safely Democratic state, so reliably left-of-center that conservatives disparage it as “the Peoples Republic of Vermont” that in the latest poll the indisputably leftish candidate for governor attracts fewer voters than the undeniably (if quirkily) right-wing president of the United States?
As is true of most political questions, there is more than one answer to this one. Some Vermont liberals are loyal Democrats, and still distrust that candidate for governor, Progressive/Democrat David Zuckerman, once just a Progressive who disparaged the Democratic Party.
Besides, lots of Vermont liberals favor Zuckerman’s opponent, Gov. Phil Scott, even though he’s a Republican, both because he signed gun control laws two years ago and for the way he has handled the Covid-19 pandemic.
As to support for that right-wing president, no doubt some Vermonters plan to vote for Donald Trump simply because they are Republicans, not because they are conservative ideologues.
But those answers don’t seem sufficient to explain the numbers in the poll by Vermont Public Radio and Vermont PBS: 24% for Zuckerman; 30% for Trump. Could it be that most Vermonters are not nearly as left wing as they (and others) often think?
And could more voters in the Green Mountain State be farther over on the political right than even most of them dare to hope?
Could be. A 2018 Gallup poll comparing ”political ideology by state” found Vermont the third most liberal state (after Massachusetts and Hawaii), but also that a plurality of Vermonters (36%) described themselves as moderates, more than the 32% who called themselves liberals.
And of course, calling oneself a “liberal” is not the same as considering oneself a “leftist.” Hence the dispute – overblown though it may be – between the Democratic Party “establishment” (liberals) and its “progressives” (left of liberal to one degree or another).
Political reputation gets determined by who makes the most noise and who gets the most votes. In Vermont, most of the noise comes from the left side of the political spectrum, even when it doesn’t get the most votes. Getting the most votes is obviously the valid measurement. But not all elections are created equal, even if they are all analyzed with equal enthusiasm.
Take this year’s Vermont presidential primary, held last March 3, Sen. Bernie Sanders won the Democratic contest, with 79,921 votes. Joseph Biden finished second with 34,669, but Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, like Sanders part of the “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party, came in third, with 19,785 votes.
So the two “progressives” got just about 100,000 votes, a huge majority of the 158,032 votes who cast Democratic ballots that day.
A day on which 488,787 Vermonters were registered voters. More than 400,000 are expected to vote in the general election going on right now through Nov. 3. Less than 20% of that number felt sufficiently attached to progressivism last March to go vote for one of those progressive candidates.
Comparable to progressive candidate David Zuckerman’s standing in the polls. So maybe the default position (as the computer nerds would call it) of the typical Vermont voter isn’t very far left after all.
Nor are right-of-center voters all that rare. In that Gallup Poll, 28%, a minority but far more than an insignificant sliver, described themselves as conservatives.
Rich Clark, the political science professor at Castleton University who supervised the VPR/PBS poll, noted (via email) that where he lives in Rutland County and in the Northeast Kingdom, “you’ll find no lack of support” for Trump. The “People’s Republic” image, Clark said, might fit Chittenden County “rather well,” but not the rest of the state.
Probably not all of Chittenden County, either, or even all of Burlington. By most indications, the recent police protests in Burlington were not very popular around the city.
One reason for Vermont’s reputation as a left-of-liberal state is the strength of Sanders, who calls himself a socialist and who is enormously popular. When he was reelected in 2018, he got 67% of the vote.
But like other successful politicians, Sanders appeals across the ideological spectrum. He does well in rural, conservative, parts of the state where voters admire his feistiness, his down-to-earth manner, his attacks on entrenched interests (and, years ago, his opposition to gun control).
Sanders’ success reveals one of the dangers of approaching politics from the perspective of ideology. Political analysts care about ideology. Many voters do not. It isn’t that they don’t care about a candidate’s policy preferences. They do. But that’s not all they care about. They care about a candidate’s strength, his or her leadership qualities (to the extent they are perceptible) whether the candidate seems to care about people like them.
To some voters of all ideological preferences (or none) Bernie Sanders meets these tests. To others, Donald Trump does.
Both the polls and the election results make clear that a substantial majority of Vermonters identify with or at least lean toward the Democratic Party. That doesn’t mean they are left of liberal. It doesn’t even mean most of them are all that left of center. They are just decidedly left of right. The typical Vermont voter tends to support Democrats less out of enthusiastic agreement with them than out of distrust – even fear – of Republicans.
Like all but the most conservative Vermonters (and Americans) those Vermont voters are pro-choice on abortion, accept the scientific consensus on global warming (and want something done about it), support periodic increases in the minimum wage, and in general accept what might be called the broad center-left political consensus.
By no means are they revolutionaries who want to remake the world.
So perhaps there is some opportunity for Vermont Republicans to become competitive again, even when Phil Scott stops running for office. They can hope Democrats move far enough to the left on some issues to frighten those non-ideological voters. Then more Republicans would have to emulate Scott, moving at least somewhat to the center.
Easier said than done.