United States presidential election in Vermont, 2016 (Ferguson Scenario)



The 2016 United States presidential election in Vermont took place on November 8, 2016, as part of the 2016 United States Presidential Election which was held throughout all fifty states and the District of Columbia. Voters chose three representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for President and Vice-President.

Vermont voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic nominee, incumbent President Henry T. Ferguson of Texas, over the Republican nominee, Senator William H. Pryor, Jr. of Alabama. Ferguson ran with Vice-President Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, while Pryor's running mate was Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

Ferguson won a landslide in Vermont with 66.30% of the vote to Pryor's 33.69%, a Democratic victory margin of 32.61%.

Vermont weighed in as ten percent more Democratic than the national average. Ferguson's victory here continued a Democratic winning streak extending back to the 1996 election. Vermont was historically a bastion of liberal Northeastern Republicanism, and from 1856 to 1964, the Green Mountain State went Republican in every presidential election during that period. But in 1964, the nomination of staunch conservative Barry Goldwater by the GOP alienated the state's electorate, and it consequently went for Lyndon B. Johnson in a landslide, the first time it ever voted Democratic. After 1964, Vermont reverted to the Republican Party through the 1992 election, although in 1980, 1984, 1988, and 1992, it was more Democratic than the national average.

Ultimately, the state flipped to the Democrats in 1996, with Mario Cuomo, and has remained in the Democratic column since. Mitt Romney managed to come within single digits in 2008, but in 2012, the state snapped back to the Democrats. And in 2016, the nomination of arch-conservative Alabama Senator William Pryor was received very negatively by the state's electorate. Portrayed as a warmonger who would carpet-bomb the Middle East by the Ferguson campaign, Pryor was viewed as deeply out of step by the liberal Northeast. Ferguson consequently won every state in the region with landslides of over sixty percent of the vote, including Vermont, which weighed in as the tenth most Democratic state in the nation.

Ferguson swept all fourteen counties in Vermont, breaking sixty percent of the vote in eleven of them. He broke seventy percent in three counties: Chittenden County, the most populous county, home to the state's largest city Burlington, Washington County, and Windham County. Pryor's best county in the state was Essex County, which he lost by a 54%-45% margin to Ferguson; Essex County had been the only county in the state to vote for Romney in 2012. Vermont was one of ten states where Ferguson won every county.