My recent post about the Burlington mayoral election drew a fair bit of intelligent response. Even on Twitter, which used to happen all the time but never in the post-Elon hellscape of X. Much of the discussion came from Democrats with fact-based arguments against the idea that Burlington is a Progressive town. Some good information, which makes me think that Burlington is less a Progressive town and more a swing town that can go either way depending on circumstances and candidate quality. And inspires me to write a follow-up taking a closer look at some telling statistics.

Let’s start with defeated Democratic hopeful Joan Shannon, seen above commiserating with campaign manager and soon-to-be-ex-councilor Hannah King. The failure of Shannon’s campaign was partially masked in the overall vote totals. She did draw 500-plus more votes than Miro Weinberger in 2021, but she badly underperformed Democratic council candidates in wards where there was a Democrat on the ballot. Shockingly so, in fact.

One more thing to emphasize up top: It wasn’t the student vote. Democrats can stop complaining about that. The numbers say quite the opposite; Progressive winner Emma Mulvaney-Stanak performed strongly in non-student areas of the city.

Continue reading →