Voters in Vermont shifted to the right in Tuesday’s election, giving the GOP significant gains in the legislature and handing Donald Trump his best of three showings in the state. The trend extended to two popular incumbent members of Congress — U.S. Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — both of whom won reelection but by lower margins than in years past.
In the Statehouse, Republicans picked up 18 seats in the 150-member House, plus six more in the 30-member Senate. While those gains won’t give the GOP control of either chamber, the party broke the Democratic supermajority in both. That means Dems can’t override Gov. Phil Scott’s vetoes on their own, giving the Republican governor increased leverage in legislative negotiations heading into January’s session.
This year’s turnout of more than 372,000 voters was a state record, surpassing the previous high set in 2020 by more than 1,000 ballots.
To find out how these shifts affected some of the biggest races, we dove deep into the vote totals. We compared unofficial results from Tuesday night with historical election results.
This is what the numbers show.
Federal Races
There was little doubt that Vermont would back Vice President Kamala Harris. In fact, our three electoral college votes were the first she won as the Associated Press called the race almost immediately after polls closed at 7 p.m.
But the results weren’t as resoundingly in her favor as they were for Democratic presidential candidates in years past. The Harris-Tim Walz ticket won 63 percent, or 235,705 votes. That’s about 7,000 fewer votes than President Joe Biden, with Harris as VP nominee, won in 2020.
Trump, meanwhile, took home 119,365 votes, or 32 percent — his strongest showing in a Vermont election.
Trump’s gains weren’t unique to Vermont. He improved in every state and most counties nationwide as the country tilted rightward. That voter attitude was reflected in the results for Sen. Sanders, who cruised to a fourth term — but earned the lowest percentage of votes in four Senate races since 2006. Sanders on Tuesday didn’t even keep up with Harris, who earned about 6,400 more votes in Vermont than the state’s senior U.S. senator, a former presidential candidate himself. Sanders took home about 62 percent of the vote compared to Republican Gerald Malloy, who won 31 percent of the electorate. By comparison, U.S. Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) won 68 percent of the vote during his first run for Senate in 2022, when he also faced Malloy.
The rightward trend carried over to U.S. Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.). She scored just 59 percent of the vote — and some 21,000 Vermont voters didn’t even pick a candidate in that race. Meanwhile, when Balint made history in 2022 as the first woman Vermont ever sent to Congress, she won 63 percent of the vote.
Statewide Races
Republican Gov. Phil Scott consistently ranks as one of the most popular governors in the country, so it was no surprise that he cruised to reelection against a challenger with little political experience. Scott, in fact, will be the longest-tenured governor in the U.S. when he is sworn in again in January, according to a campaign spokesperson.
So it should come as no surprise that when Scott is up for reelection every two years, he does even better than before. And Dems have essentially ceded him the post. This year, Scott earned about 72 percent of the vote, or 266,340 ballots cast, for his largest winning margin ever — just a smidge more than the 71 percent he won in 2022.
Scott is known as a check on the Democrat-controlled legislature. He added to his middle-ground bona fides when he revealed on Tuesday that he’d voted for Harris — four years after he voted for Biden.
Scott bestowed his stamp of approval on several down-ballot Republicans. His endorsement may have meant most to lieutenant gubernatorial candidate John Rodgers. A farmer and former Democratic member of the state Senate from West Glover, Rodgers ran for the post as a moderate Republican who vowed to serve the interests of working-class Vermonters. His message had appeal, as Rodgers scored the biggest upset of the night, knocking off incumbent Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman. The race was the closest statewide contest of the night, with Rodgers winning by just 1.5 percent, or about 6,000 votes.
Other incumbent Democrats running for reelection to statewide office still won on Tuesday — but they all received far less support than they did two years ago. Treasurer Mike Pieciak, Attorney General Charity Clark, Auditor Doug Hoffer and Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas each received between 54 and 56 percent, a 10 percent swing from 2022, when each received about 65 percent of the vote.
The State Legislature
While the losses in the Vermont legislature certainly stung Democrats, they still will have a healthy majority in both chambers. They’ll be driving policy discussions, even if they’ll need to compromise more to get anything done during the next biennium.
That said, the underlying numbers reflect the electorate’s deep concerns about the party in power, much of it likely stemming from the debate about affordability.
For example, three committee chairs lost their seats: Sen. Chris Bray (D-Addison), Rep. Mike McCarthy (D-St. Albans) and Rep. Diane Lanpher (D-Vergennes). Bray chairs the Natural Resources and Energy Committee and has been a big proponent of the Clean Heat Standard, which would likely raise heating costs for people. In a race for two seats, Bray finished third, about 650 votes behind Republican Steven Heffernan, who ran on affordability.
Lanpher, chair of the budget-writing House Appropriations Committee, finished third in a race for two seats in which the leading vote-getter was Republican Rob North. In 2022, Lanpher was the district’s leading vote-getter, while North finished third.
McCarthy, chair of the House Government Operations and Military Affairs Committee, easily won his seat in 2022 with 57 percent of the vote, besting Republican Joe Luneau. This year, Luneau turned the tables, defeating the incumbent by winning 52 percent of the vote.
Some voters showed their displeasure by not voting in particular races. In the Chittenden-Central District Senate race, all three incumbents — Democrat Martine Gulick, Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, a Democrat/Progressive, and Progressive/Democrat Tanya Vyhovsky — were reelected. They faced no other competition.
But 38,700 voters didn’t choose a candidate in that race — and another 1,315 wrote in someone not on the ballot.
In Bennington, voters overlooked bad behavior by a Republican incumbent, Rep. Mary Morrissey, and sent her back to the House. She was widely ridiculed earlier this year after she was caught on camera dumping cups of water into a bag belonging to a Democratic colleague, Jim Carroll. Morrissey was the leading vote-getter in her district.
Carroll didn’t fare as well. In a race for two seats, he finished third.
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This article appears in Nov 6-12, 2024.
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