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 County results Municipality results
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The1940 United States presidential election in Vermont took place on November 5, 1940, as part of the1940 United States presidential election which was held throughout all contemporary 48 states. Voters chose three representatives, or electors to theElectoral College, who voted forpresident andvice president.
Vermont voted for theRepublican nominee, corporate lawyerWendell Willkie ofNew York, over theDemocratic nominee, incumbentPresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt ofNew York. Willkie's running mate wasSenate Minority LeaderCharles L. McNary ofOregon, while Roosevelt ran withSecretary of AgricultureHenry A. Wallace ofIowa.
Willkie took 54.78% of the vote, to Roosevelt's 44.92%, a margin of 9.86%. Vermont historically was a bastion ofNortheastern Republicanism, and by 1940 it had gone Republican in every presidential election since the founding of the Republican Party. From1856 to1936, Vermont had had the longest streak of voting Republican of any state, having never voted Democratic before, and this tradition continued in 1940. Vermont had been one of only two states (along with nearbyMaine) to reject DemocratFranklin D. Roosevelt in all 4 of his presidential campaigns, even in the nationwide Democratic landslides of1932 and 1936.
However 1940 would prove to be Roosevelt's high point in Vermont, and inNew England as a whole, even as the rest of the nation shifted toward the GOP. Roosevelt improved on his previous showings in Vermont, coming within just under 10 percentage points of winning the state, the only time he ever got within single digits of a Republican opponent in the state. The results inMaine, the only state to have joined Vermont in voting Republican in 1936, showed a similar but even more dramatic swing toward FDR, with Willkie only holding onto Maine by a narrow 51–49 margin. Roosevelt's gain in Vermont and other New England states, in an election when Willkie carried almost seven hundred counties that the President had won during his landslide four years beforehand, was due to support in the region for helping Britain and France duringWorld War II. Vermont was one of five states that swung more Democratic compared to 1936, alongside New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maine, and North Carolina.[1]
Whereas Vermont had been the most Republican state in the union in the 1930s, a strong swing against Roosevelt in theMidwest pushed Vermont into being only the fifth most Republican state afterSouth Dakota,Nebraska,Kansas andNorth Dakota,[2] although it still registered as a strong twenty percent more Republican than the national average. Willkie carried ten of the state's 14 counties, breaking 60% in 6. However, the three northwestern counties of Vermont had been Democratic enclaves in an otherwise Republican state throughout the 1930s and 1940s, and Roosevelt once again wonChittenden County,Franklin County andGrand Isle County for the Democrats. Roosevelt also managed to carry for the first time ruralEssex County in thenortheast of the state, being the first Democrat to do so sinceMartin Van Buren in1836.[3]
| 1940 United States presidential election in Vermont[4] | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Votes | Percentage | Electoral votes | |
| Republican | Wendell Willkie | 78,371 | 54.78% | 3 | |
| Democratic | Franklin D. Roosevelt (incumbent) | 64,269 | 44.92% | 0 | |
| Communist | Earl Browder | 411 | 0.29% | 0 | |
| N/A | Write-ins | 11 | 0.01% | 0 | |
| Totals | 143,062 | 100.00% | 3 | ||
| County | Wendell Lewis Willkie Republican | Franklin Delano Roosevelt Democratic | Various candidates Other parties | Margin | Total votes cast[5] | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| # | % | # | % | # | % | # | % | ||
| Addison | 4,500 | 63.22% | 2,593 | 36.43% | 25 | 0.35% | 1,907 | 26.79% | 7,118 |
| Bennington | 5,845 | 57.42% | 4,308 | 42.32% | 27 | 0.27% | 1,537 | 15.10% | 10,180 |
| Caledonia | 5,793 | 62.56% | 3,444 | 37.19% | 23 | 0.25% | 2,349 | 25.37% | 9,260 |
| Chittenden | 7,926 | 41.58% | 11,069 | 58.07% | 66 | 0.35% | -3,143 | -16.49% | 19,061 |
| Essex | 1,365 | 46.96% | 1,531 | 52.67% | 11 | 0.38% | -166 | -5.71% | 2,907 |
| Franklin | 5,258 | 41.21% | 7,439 | 58.30% | 63 | 0.49% | -2,181 | -17.09% | 12,760 |
| Grand Isle | 716 | 41.65% | 998 | 58.06% | 5 | 0.29% | -282 | -16.40% | 1,719 |
| Lamoille | 2,566 | 63.61% | 1,463 | 36.27% | 5 | 0.12% | 1,103 | 27.34% | 4,034 |
| Orange | 4,527 | 68.81% | 2,029 | 30.84% | 23 | 0.35% | 2,498 | 37.97% | 6,579 |
| Orleans | 4,480 | 57.52% | 3,294 | 42.29% | 15 | 0.19% | 1,186 | 15.23% | 7,789 |
| Rutland | 10,829 | 55.02% | 8,798 | 44.70% | 54 | 0.27% | 2,031 | 10.32% | 19,681 |
| Washington | 8,426 | 52.00% | 7,727 | 47.69% | 50 | 0.31% | 699 | 4.31% | 16,203 |
| Windham | 7,031 | 63.01% | 4,101 | 36.75% | 27 | 0.24% | 2,930 | 26.26% | 11,159 |
| Windsor | 9,109 | 62.34% | 5,475 | 37.47% | 28 | 0.19% | 3,634 | 24.87% | 14,612 |
| Totals | 78,371 | 54.78% | 64,269 | 44.92% | 422 | 0.29% | 14,102 | 9.86% | 143,062 |
State and district results of the1940 United States presidential election | ||
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