Merrimack College

Variances in Voting

Behavioral Patterns in West Virginia and Vermont

John McCarthy

10/26/2016

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Voting Behaviors

Objectively, the history of the state of West Virginia and the state of Vermont could not

seem to be more dissimilar, and today appear to be polar opposites of one another. However

they share several characteristics both historically and demographically that make them an

interesting pair. The most striking similarity though is that the two went through a sudden and

unexpected change in the way the states fell politically. Both of these states used to be solid and

automatic votes for their respective party at the presidential level before seemingly overnight,

they became firmly entrenched in the other part’s camp. Practically beginning with the founding

of the Republican Party in 1854, the state of Vermont was its most avid supporter, and the

Democrats controlled West Virginia for decades. Even today the lingering vestiges of this old

alignment appear at the state level, with Vermont only electing one Democrat to the Senate in its

entire history and only one member of that party to its at-large congressional seat. In West

Virginia, the first Republican elected Senator since W. Chapman Revercomb in 1956 was elected

just two years ago. However it was the sudden and complete 180° change that makes it strange

to tell someone from the Millennial generation that Vermont was a Republican stronghold and

West Virginia a bulwark of the Democratic Party. There are several possibilities that could

describe the variance in the voting patterns in these two states including a demographic change,

the change in the economic outlook of the state and the ideological change within the states and

within the national parties.

Both the states of Vermont and West Virginia entered the Union out of land once

belonging to another state. Vermont’s split happened much earlier than its counterpart,

establishing its sovereignty independent of New York and New Hampshire in 1791, embodying

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the independent streak that is typical of the New England character1. It quickly established itself

as an opponent of the War of 1812 and prohibited slavery in its original constitution. As the

Federalist Party died out during the so-called Era of Good Feelings and the Old Republicans

fractured into several factions, Vermont became a haven for the supporters of John Quincy

Adams and the burgeoning Anti-Masonic Party. In 1832, Vermont actually voted for the Anti-

Masonic candidate over Henry Clay, the only state that William Wirt would carry that year.

With the Whig Party becoming the primary adversary of the Democrats, Vermont remained

firmly in the Whig camp, even during periods of relative dominance by the Democrats across the

rest of the country2. By the birth of the Republican Party in 1854, Vermont eagerly took up that

mantle as well. Vermont was so solidly Republican, it did not elect its first Democratic governor

until 1853 and would not repeat the feat for the next 110 years. Even in Democratic sweep

years, Vermont stayed true to the Party of Lincoln, being one of two states that Alf Landon was

able to win in 1936 against Franklin Roosevelt.

Vermont’s political predilections were so well known to the country at large that in the

1954 film White Christmas, when Danny Kay was attempting to think of a novelty in Vermont

he remarked to Bing Crosby, “Maybe we can dig up a Democrat.” To which Bing responded

with the scoff, “No, they’d stone him.”3 The first time that the state voted for a Democrat for

president was 1964 when the average Vermonter could not stomach the rabid conservatism

espoused by Senator Barry Goldwater, but four years later they were back in the Republican

column4. However, slowly the ideological shift across the nation had begun a process that as of

1 "The 14th State." Vermont History Explorer, Vermont Historical Society. November 15, 2016.2 Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party. Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. 22-23. 3 Danny Kay, Bing Crosby, White Christmas. Dir. Michael Curtiz, Irving Berlin. 1954: Paramount Pictures, Film.4 Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. New York: Nation Books, 2001. Pp. 512.

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today has Vermont as one of the most liberal states in the Union, giving President Obama his

largest win in 2012 after Hawaii.

West Virginia though similar to Vermont in many ways, did not become solidly

Democrat until further in its lifetime than Vermont identified with the Republicans, and has

switched parties much more recently then Vermont has. Both states emerged from the

boundaries of another, but West Virginia’s was more controversy fraught than Vermont’s was.

At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1860, West Virginia had been encompassed by the

Commonwealth of Virginia for the entirety of the history of the United States. The decision by

the Commonwealth to join its southern brethren in succeeding from the Union not only was a

very difficult choice but also one that divided Virginia very deeply. While admittance into the

Confederate States of America brought along some of the finest soldiers in the American armed

services, the mountainous western region of the commonwealth, long disenfranchised by the

planter class in the east who were over represented in the General Assembly, was apoplectic at

the vote’s verdict5. Many of the delegates from this region reconvened at the Wheeling

Convention and set up a loyalist government in the west, sending Senators and Representatives

to Washington in Virginia’s place whilst drawing up plans for a new state6. The new state was

accepted with a constitution allowing for the gradual abolition of slavery in 1863, though border

disputes have long festered between the west and its parent state, some of them appearing before

the Supreme Court.

The death of the Reconstruction era in the 19th Century led to a resurgence of the

Democratic Party at the state level, but at the presidential level the state remained Republican all

the way through the sweeps of the 1920s. The onset of the Great Depression in 1929 led to the 5 “West Virginia.” History.com, The History Channel. 2016. Web.6 “First Wheeling Convention.” West Virginia Archives & History, West Virginia Division of Culture and History. Web.

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Democratic dominance that would continue for the next 80 years. The Democratic Party remains

the only major party to nominate a Mountaineer for president, John W. Davis in 1924 who would

go on to lose to Calvin Coolidge. Between the thirties and the early 2000s, the state has largely

remained within the hands of the Democratic Party at the state level. The state did vote for

President Eisenhower in the 1956, but remained firmly under the control of the Democrats, not

voting for a Republican again until the 49 state sweeps in 1972 and 1984. Even in 1980 when

President Jimmy Carter only won six states, one of them was West Virginia and it was also one

of the only ten states that Governor Michael Dukakis won in 1988. After voting twice for

Governor Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, West Virginia began to move from the left to the right,

voting for Governor George W. Bush in 2000, and voting for the Republican candidate for

president in the next four subsequent elections, increasing the margin of victory each time7.

Though the state voted for her husband twice, West Virginia is projected to vote for Donald

Trump over Hillary Clinton by 42 percentage points in 20168.

West Virginia was slightly different than Vermont in that it was the presidential vote

that eventually affected local politics. After voting for the Republican candidate beginning in

2000, both chambers of the state legislature became controlled by the Republican Party in the

2014 midterm elections. That same year all three of the congressional seats were won by the

GOP for the first time since 1924, and the Republicans won a Senate seat for the first time since

1957. Vermont’s transition occurred beginning at the state level and eventually expanding to

include its national political stance as well. There are several possible explanations to this

phenomenon, many of which have been posed by historians and average Americans. The first

potential explanation for this change is a shift in the states demographics. There is the common 7 John Woolley and Gerhard Peters, “Presidential Elections Data.” The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara. November 15, 2016.8 “West Virginia Election Results: 2016.” The New York Times, The New York Times Company. November 9, 2016.

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belief espoused by many from political pundits to ordinary citizens who believe the electoral

shift occurred in the state because of the influx of New Yorkers moving to the area. The

presence of prominent New Yorkers within the state of Vermont has only strengthened this

notion as popular ice cream magnates Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry’s Ice

Cream are both Long Island and Brooklyn supplants and the Independent United States Senator

Bernie Sanders is an expatriate from the Empire State910.

The perception of this however, may be too simplistic an answer to the question of why

this change has happened in the state. A book on the shifting nature of politics in upper New

England showed that it was the areas of Vermont that had the highest born in state proportion of

residents were the focus of the Democratic gains in the state. Those areas that had high

percentage of native Vermonters has the strongest Democratic gains, which strangely enough

coincided with the cities and towns with a high population of ethnically English populations. At

the time this study was taken, it was the cities with new state residents and those with ethnically

French background where the Republican’s were still strong and actually making gains within

these areas11.

This could suggest a few things, and where the out-of-staters came from becomes an

important issue. If they came from the more conservative areas of the country, including

neighboring New Hampshire, then that could explain it. If those with French heritage are more

likely to vote Republican, than it could be related to the close proximity of Quebec and any

Canadians who emigrated there. Those leaving Canada for the United States generally do so for

economic reasons, as many immigrants do, and it would stand to reason that by leaving a much

9 “Our History.” Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. November 2016. 10 “About Bernie.” Bernie Sanders, United States Senator from Vermont. November 2016.11 Robert W. Steel, Changing Patterns of Voting in the Northeastern United States: Electoral Realignment, 1952-1996. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. Pp. 63-65.

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more liberal society in Canada, they would be drawn to the conservative wing of the American

political system on economic issues. This could perhaps coincide with the strength of the left in

Canada in the 1980s and before with the elections of Pierre Trudeau juxtaposed to the elections

of Ronald Reagan in the United States at primarily the same time. Further the anti-Quebec

stance that Trudeau took in the face of the Quebec independence referendum, refusing to even

acknowledge its legitimacy12. While perhaps not all of the changes in the state’s record have

come from an influx of new voters, the study aforementioned was conducted almost twenty years

ago and some still have doubts that it has nothing to do with an increase in voters not originally

from Vermont.

The college towns are very important in Vermont, as one of the most rural and least

populated states in the Union; they are a concentration of young voters in an incredibly liberal

environment that may also take in students from other states. Though Vermont is the whitest

state in the Union, the city of Burlington, Vermont is a member city of the Refugee Resettlement

program which is making its largest vote center more ethnically diverse and increasing the

likelihood of voting for a Democrat. Also, there is credence to the suggestion that some New

Yorkers or those from urban Massachusetts decided to move away from their homes into the

upper New England rural regions. There after a “self sorting” took place, and conservatives

attracted to the no tax state of New Hampshire settled there, and liberals decided to go to

Vermont instead in the 1960s and 1970s13.

Professor Garrison Nelson of the University of Vermont also points to the passage of a

state initiative called Act 250, which limited development projects across the state, which in turn

12 John English, Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliot Trudeau Volume Two: 1968-2000. Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2009. Pp. 454.13 Micah Cohen, “’New Vermont’ is Liberal, but ‘Old Vermont’ is Still There.” The New York Times, The New York Times Company. October 21, 2012.

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appealed to the environmentalists across the country and encouraged them to move there, further

pulling the state to the left. The impact of that migration can be seen on the political level, as the

outgoing Governor of Vermont, Peter Schumlin was the first native Vermonter in the post in

almost forty years14. Though the current makeup of Vermont does not appear likely to vote for a

Republican for president in the foreseeable future, statewide they can still be competitive with

Schumlin about to be replaced by a Republican governor.

While there appears to be some credence to the idea that new Vermonters were influential

in the move to the ideological left, but it does not seem to be the case for West Virginia. The

Mountain State is not an attraction to Americans inclined toward nomadic tendencies, being one

of the poorest states in the Union and the terrain is heavily forested and, as their nicknames

suggest, mountainous. West Virginia has the lowest college graduates per capita in the United

States and there are many issues with healthcare and home ownership. That being said, West

Virginia is perhaps the most “blue collar” state in the country with many residences in the

mining industry and other labor intensive occupations. Further, West Virginia is the second most

rural state after Vermont with very little urbanization, which has an impact in political

considerations. Considering all of these factors, what could have led to the shift in state politics

that has made it now so reliable for the Grand Old Party?

A possible explanation for the change in both the Mountain State and the Green

Mountain State is that the central politics of the state remained much the same, and rather it was

the national parties that shifted ideologies and alienated those who previously had been their

most solid base of support. Examples of this can be seen in the representatives that were elected

to the Congress from Vermont and West Virginia. The top three prominent Vermont 14 Micah Cohen, “’New Vermont’ is Liberal, but ‘Old Vermont’ is Still There.” The New York Times, The New York Times Company. October 21, 2012.

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Republicans in Congress from the 1960s to the early 2000s, George Aiken, Robert Stafford and

Jim Jeffords were all considered moderates or even liberal Republicans when they served. West

Virginia’s Senators were similar in that both Democrats Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller were

on the moderate side of the Party of Jackson, though Byrd more than Rockefeller. In an

ideological lifetime score from GovTrack, Jeffords voting record was to the left of both

Rockefeller and Byrd. Similarly, Jeffords predecessor Robert Stafford was rated to the left of

Senator Byrd, and former Senator Aiken was rated in the same ideological region as Byrd and

Rockefeller’s predecessor Senator Randolph.

George Aiken’s western liberals had long battled the conservative easterners within the

state’s GOP and beginning in the 1960s he was largely successful in steering the party

establishment to the left. Early in Jim Jeffords’ career, he became associated with the Aiken

wing of the party when as Attorney General he challenged International Paper Co. over its

pollution of Lake Champlain, defying the pro-business elements in the party15. Jeffords would

later be the only US House of Representatives member to vote against President Reagan’s 1981

tax cut bill, also known as the Kemp-Roth tax cuts16. The Senate passed it by voice vote making

it unknown whether or not Senator Byrd voted for the cuts or not. However Byrd and

Rockefeller, as well as Jim Jeffords (then senator) voted for the 1986 Reagan tax cut17.

The unconventionality of these representatives can be seen in other votes as well in

Congress, most strikingly in the vicious confirmation votes of Supreme Court nominees. When

President Reagan nominated Robert Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987, the fight that occurred

in the confirmation hearings resulted in the rejection of Bork as a Supreme Court Justice by a

15 Garrison Nelson, “Jim Jeffords: Reluctant Rebel.” Vermont Digger, vtdigger.org. September 14, 2014. Web.16 “H.R. 4242 — 97th Congress: Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981.” www.GovTrack.us. 1981. November 30, 2016.17 “H.R. 3838 — 99th Congress: Tax Reform Act of 1986.” www.GovTrack.us. 1985. November 30, 2016.

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vote of 42-58. Two Democrats voted in favor, but six Republicans voted against including

Robert Stafford of Vermont. A similar fight four years later occurred with the Clarence Thomas

nomination. Thomas was able to survive by a vote of 52-48, but Jeffords was one of only two

Senate Republicans to vote against his confirmation. However, the 1969 fight in the replacement

of Abe Fortas to the bench saw a reversal of this, with Nixon’s nominee Clement Haynesworth

failing to attain a spot on the bench with a 45-55 vote. West Virginia Senators, Byrd and

Randolph voted yea, along with Republican Senators Aiken and Prouty. The follow-up vote for

the open seat, with the nominee this time being G. Harold Carswell, was also defeated by a vote

of 45-51. Byrd, Randolph and Aiken all voted for Judge Carswell, but Senator Prouty voted

against the Nixon nominee. Even the comparably less contentious confirmation of Samuel Alito

in 2005 saw Senator Jeffords, now an Independent caucusing with the Democrats, vote against

the conservative while Senator Byrd voted for him.

These votes on the consent of the potential appointees to the highest bench show the

relative fluidity of the representatives in going against the orthodoxy of their political parties.

This can be seen in the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which Senators Byrd and Rockefeller

voted in favor of18. Again the expected votes of these representatives did not follow what was

assumed of these Senators in the case of the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force

Against Iraq which Senator Rockefeller voted in favor of but Senator Jeffords did not19. In 2003

the differences can be seen between Senators Byrd and Jeffords over the Partial-Birth Abortion

Ban, which the Democrat Byrd voted yea on the ban and the Independent Jeffords voted nay20.

18 “H.R. 3396 — 104th Congress: Defense of Marriage Act.” www.GovTrack.us. 1996. November 30, 2016. 19 “H.J.Res. 114 — 107th Congress: Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002.” www.GovTrack.us. 2002. November 30, 2016.20 “S. 3 — 108th Congress: Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.” www.GovTrack.us. 2003. November 30, 2016.

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At this point, Senator Jeffords had left the Republican Party and was an Independent

caucusing with the Democrats. The 1990s and early 2000s saw a flood of liberal Republicans

leaving the GOP and blue-dog conservative Democrats joining it. After the 2000 election the US

Senate was split with 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats, but the Republicans held the majority

because Republican Vice President Dick Cheney acted as the tie-breaking vote. This Senate

makeup lasted for a few months before the White House got into a fight with Senator Jeffords

who wanted to keep federal funding for special education in a specific bill and threatened to

cross the aisle. Not wanting to be held hostage for the entirety of the 107th Congress, the White

House decided to let him walk and give them Democrats control of the upper chamber21. The

ideological shift in the parties could be seen with the numerous aisle crossings that occurred in

this time period. Liberal Northeast Republicans such as Senator Arlen Specter, Jim Webb and

Lincoln Chafee joining Jeffords in moving to the left while conservatives such as Buddy

Roemer, Norm Coleman, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Sonny Perdue and Richard Shelby joined

the Republicans and even Democrats such as Joe Lieberman and Michael Bloomberg moved to

the right in this time period22.

This time period shows a fundamental shift in the party identities as they became less

moderate and more sectionalized. While the drift of Vermont to the left was better chronicled

and less surprising, it was really the 2000 election that showed these true differences. The aim of

the Bush-Cheney campaign was to drive out the base voters by appeals to the cultural issues that

split the parties, issues such as abortion and gay marriage. This had the effect of marginalizing

the moderate and liberal elements within the party and they either did not vote, or decided to vote

for Ralph Nader or Vice President Gore. The 2004 election had even more of a cultural focus 21 Peter Baker, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House. Anchor Publishing, New York. 2013. Print. Pp. 103-10522 “Politicians who switched parties.” CNN politics, CNN. June 3, 2015. Web.

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and the President’s campaign was very successful in painting Kerry as a Massachusetts liberal

the way the first President Bush had tagged Michael Dukakis sixteen years before23. Kerry fled

to the right of his previous issues to try to compete, but was eventually unsuccessful. However,

this tectonic transformation left out many traditional Dewey and Rockefeller Republicans from

the Eastern Establishment and by consequence George W. Bush became the first Republican to

win the White House without taking Vermont, and the first Republican to win without any

electoral votes from California. While Vermont had begun to be identified as a liberal state in

the years previously, the metamorphosis of the state was solidified in the contentious races of the

2000s.

The election of 2000 also saw West Virginia become a solidly Republican state in the

presidential election cycles. Bill Clinton won the state twice because of his moderate stances on

the issues and the fact that he was a Southern Democrat, as well as his focus on the blue-collar

workers that so populate the state. Clinton’s message of “I feel your pain” resonated with the

voters in the Mountain State. The traditional Democratic ties to the labor unions was particularly

helpful in a state that had high union membership and higher rates of voters with only a high

school degree24. This changed in the election of 2000, where Al Gore, though he was a

Southerner himself, seemed to be more a creature of Washington than the Texas Governor. Gore

could never shake the image of an elitist who talked down to people rather than the folksy Bush

that voters found charming and likeable. What killed Gore in West Virginia, and has since

doomed the Democratic nominees of president there, was his stance on the environment and

energy particularly the coal industry. As Vice President, Gore became the face of the green and

23 Elaine Kamarck, "Can outdated label still hurt Kerry?" The Boston Globe, Boston Globe Media Partners LLC. July 25, 2004.24 Troy M. Stewart, Richard A. Brisbin, Robert Jay Dilger, Allan S. Hammock, and Christopher Z. Mooney. "West Virginia Politics and Government." (1997): 153-155.

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renewable energy lobby, a position he has kept out of office with his global warming crusade and

his holy war against fossil fuels25. The coal industry is perhaps the most important jobs sector in

the state and the hostility that the Gore campaign exhibited towards one of the state’s main

source of income hurt his chances of winning the state greatly26. The entire 2000 campaign can

be reexamined with hundreds of what-if propositions, and as with any state, had Gore just

flipped this once Democratic mainstay or even his own home state of Tennessee than he would

be president. Democrats did not help themselves in West Virginia during the culture wars of the

2000s and the retirement of Jay Rockefeller and death of Robert Byrd has led to a Republican

resurgence in the state and the only Democrats who can survive there are those like Joe Manchin,

who hinted that he may switch parties in the Senate or may be in consideration for a cabinet spot

in the Trump Administration27.

The Democrats did not help themselves in the 2016 election when Hillary Clinton said

that she was going to “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of a business.”28 This

antagonism towards the coal industry led to a thorough rejection by the state’s voters in the

Democratic primary where they voted for Senator Bernie Sanders, and the presidential election

when the voters went overwhelmingly for Mr. Trump in what had once been the archetype of

Clinton-ism in the 1990s. What this seems to show, in both Vermont and West Virginia, is that

the dramatic transition of voting behaviors in the states may be connected. While there is a case

to be made in Vermont about the influx of new voters with alternative viewpoints to those of the

traditional Republicans, the better argument is that it was not so much that these two states left

25 Mahita Gajanan, “Al Gore Says He Hopes To Work With Donald Trump To Fight Climate Change.” Time Magazine, Time Inc. November 9, 2016.26 Micah Cohen, “In West Virginia, Coal Means More, Party Less.” The New York Times, The New York Times Company. July 3, 2012.27 Eric Beech, “Trump considering Democratic Senator Manchin for energy secretary.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters Corporation. December 1, 2016.28 Daniel Strauss, “Clinton haunted by coal country comment.” Politico.com, Politico. May 10, 2016.

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their parties as the parties left them. The conservative ascendancy in the GOP that began in the

1970s and continued to calcify support within the party through the 21st Century differs greatly

than the party that counted George Aiken, John Chaffee, Jacob Javits and Edward Brooke among

its members. While it is possible to say that Vermont has become more liberal in its outlook, it

is difficult to argue that it was ever truly conservative the way that conservatism is presently

constituted.

There is the same issue in West Virginia, as the Democratic Party became increasingly

liberal and lost its core support of the downtrodden, blue-collar, union and low-income voters

and instead concentrated its “get out the vote” efforts on the urban centers and an amalgamation

of cherry picked identity groups through targeted efforts, it ended up demonizing the group that

had for so long been the heart of the party. The polarization of both major parties has led to a

realignment in the voting blocks, and one can imagine the Democrats of today would shudder at

the thought of once counting Zell Miller, Phil Gramm, Nathan Deal, John Connally and John

Breaux as members of their party. The energy issue has lost the Democrats elections on all

levels in the states of West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and at the moment it has

eliminated the chances of them winning West Virginia in a presidential contest for the

foreseeable future.

If either party looks to retake these states that they have abandoned in the past decades

there needs to be a way to incorporate moderating positions in the party and not allow the

national stances of the party nominees to poison the well for down ballot candidates. For

Democrats to be successful in West Virginia, they need to be able to straddle the coal question

and the national stances. For Republicans in Vermont, there needs to be a way to stick to fiscal

conservatism without delving too deeply into the cultural conservative traps that would lead to

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their downfall. Both parties have begun to engage in internecine warfare within their own

caucuses, purging nonconformists to their accepted dogmas with vicious bloodletting that stifles

alternative viewpoints. If there was one way that this could be rectified, it would need to be done

in the nominating process. The issue with primary contests is that generally only the motivated

extreme wings of the parties turn out to the primary contests which naturally lead to the choice of

ideological purity, and then the average voter complains about his choices in the general election.

A return to the convention methods of the past would be more likely to allow for ideological

variances. The primary contests could remain for the presidential nominees of the parties, but

the extremely low turnout in statewide primary races for offices such as state treasurer or

attorney general only leads to the increased possibility of extreme elements to be placed in

positions of power. While the convention process relies upon a small cadre of “experts” rather

than the populace at large, and rightly argued against as an oligarchic form of government, the

way the primary process works now could also be argued as oligarchic, when the turnout is only

ten percent or lower. Presidential primaries at least have higher turnouts and can be better said to

represent the interests of the voting populace, the same cannot be said for almost any primary

race across the Union. This change may not occur, but it is worth considering at a time when

every voter seems to complain about polarization but no one seems prepared to do anything

about it. If there becomes a way for the parties to integrate a wider spectrum of ideas within the

“big tent” notion of political parties, whether through reform of the primary process or by some

other alteration, than there may yet be hope for the Northeast Republicans and Southern

Democrats.

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Baker, Peter. Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House. Anchor Publishing, New York.

2013. Print. Pp. 103-105

Beech, Eric. “Trump considering Democratic Senator Manchin for energy secretary.” Reuters,

Thomson Reuters Corporation. December 1, 2016.

Cohen, Micah. “In West Virginia, Coal Means More, Party Less.” The New York Times, The

New York Times Company. July 3, 2012.

Cohen, Micah. “’New Vermont’ is Liberal, but ‘Old Vermont’ is Still There.” The New York

Times, The New York Times Company. October 21, 2012.

English, John. Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliot Trudeau Volume Two: 1968-2000.

Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2009. Pp. 454.

“First Wheeling Convention.” West Virginia Archives & History, West Virginia Division of

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Gajanan, Mahita. “Al Gore Says He Hopes To Work With Donald Trump To Fight Climate

Change.” Time Magazine, Time Inc. November 9, 2016.

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Resolution of 2002.” www.GovTrack.us. 2002. November 30, 2016.

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Pp. 22-23.

“H.R. 3396 — 104th Congress: Defense of Marriage Act.” www.GovTrack.us. 1996. November

30, 2016.

“H.R. 3838 — 99th Congress: Tax Reform Act of 1986.” www.GovTrack.us. 1985. November

30, 2016.

“H.R. 4242 — 97th Congress: Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981.” www.GovTrack.us. 1981.

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Kamarck, Elaine, “Can outdated label still hurt Kerry?" The Boston Globe, Boston Globe Media

Partners LLC. July 25, 2004.

Kay, Danny, Bing Crosby, White Christmas. Dir. Michael Curtiz, Irving Berlin. 1954:

Paramount Pictures, Film.

Nelson, Garrison. “Jim Jeffords: Reluctant Rebel.” Vermont Digger, vtdigger.org. September

14, 2014. Web.

“Our History.” Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. November 2016.

Perlstein, Rick. Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American

Consensus. New York: Nation Books, 2001. Pp. 512.

“Politicians who switched parties.” CNN politics, CNN. June 3, 2015. Web.

“S. 3 — 108th Congress: Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.” www.GovTrack.us. 2003.

November 30, 2016.

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Steel, Robert W. Changing Patterns of Voting in the Northeastern United States: Electoral

Realignment, 1952-1996. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State

University Press, 1998. Pp. 63-65.

Stewart, Troy M., Richard A. Brisbin, Robert Jay Dilger, Allan S. Hammock, and Christopher Z.

Mooney. "West Virginia Politics and Government." (1997): 153-155.

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Project, University of California, Santa Barbara. November 15, 2016.