[Wallace T.]

The major problem with Vermont is not the descendants of the Yankees who settled the state in the 1700s, or of the French Canadian, Irish, and other European immigrants who came there in the 1800s and early 1900s, but of the post-1960 wave of people from southern New England, New York, and New Jersey who transformed the state from being socially conservative and Republican to socially liberal and Democrat. Bernie Sanders and Howard Dean were born and raised in New York, and the current governor and sole state representative to Congress are natives of Massachusetts. Of course, Patrick Leahy is a native Vermonter.

What may be interesting is how Vermonters will react if Hillary Clinton is elected President next year with a Congress with a larger Democratic majority and she pursues an essentially socialist European agenda combined with corporate welfare of the type her husband dealt in. There is something of a left-libertarian streak among the transplants that may be as unhappy with her policies as economic and limited government conservatives were with Bush's so-called compassionate (big government) conservatism.

[Roccus]

I went to school there back in the early 60’s and I remember VT being much as you stated. Once the hippies realized just how sparsely the state was populated, the handwriting was on the wall.