Analyze Vermont's vote with these maps

Maps & Analysis by Michael Reinhardt

For political data nerds, there’s nothing better than a good map. That’s why the Community News Service is publishing seven of them.

The maps below look at the 2020 election from a variety of interesting vantage points, including the towns that Republican Governor Phil Scott flipped from the 2016 election, how the popular gubernatorial candidate fared over his fellow Republican, outgoing President Donald Trump, and more.  

This map looks at the 47 towns Phil Scott (R) lost to Sue Minter (D) in 2016, but then won against David Zuckerman (D) in 2020. The map shows Scott’s improvement in those towns compared to his 2016 performance.

For example, in the Democratic stronghold of Norwich, Scott received just 20.70% of the vote in 2016, but 50.64% in 2020. Therefore the map shows his 29.94% improvement. It is color-coded in order to visually highlight where Scott made the greatest gains.  

This map looks at Scott’s margin of victory over Trump in 2020 in the same 47 battleground towns. Of the 47 towns, the largest margin came in Stowe where Scott beat Trump by 53.71%. By comparison, he only won by 17.54% in Halifax.

This map looks at Scott’s margin of victory over Trump in 2016 in the same 47 battleground towns. In 2016, Scott only beat Trump by 28.1% in Stowe, and just 2.06% in Halifax. The range I applied for this map, and the 2020 Scott v. Trump was derived from the maximum (53.71%: 2020) and minimum (2.06%: 2016) values, so changes would be visually apparent and consistent.

 This map looks at Clinton’s margin over Scott in 2016 in the same 47 battleground towns. Clinton ran 20.81% ahead of Scott in Stowe that year, compared to just 2.28% in Halifax.

This map looks at Biden’s margin over Scott in 2020 in the same 47 battleground towns. Scott’s stronger performance was evident in Stowe where Biden only ran ahead of him by 7.29%, whereas Scott actually beat Biden by 1.41% in Halifax.

A standard range was applied to the Clinton and Biden vs. Scott maps using the same methodology as with the others. Clinton’s 64.25% margin in Norwich was used as the maximum while Biden’s -1.41% margin was used as the minimum for both maps. Again, this was for the purpose of making the shifts visually apparent and consistent.

This map looks at Clinton’s margin over Trump in 2016 in the same 47 battleground towns. She did 48.91% better than Trump in Stowe, compared to just 4.34% better in Halifax.

This map looks at Biden’s margin over Trump in 2020 in the same 47 battleground towns. Biden ran 61% ahead of Trump in Stowe, and 16.13% better in Halifax. Like the other comparative maps, a range was determined by finding the maximum (81.55%: Norwich 2020) and the minimum (4.34%: Halifax 2016).

*All maps show the statewide average and the average of those 47 towns for comparative purposes