You might think Vermont is a done deal — but one thing could damage Bernie Sanders a lot in his home state

To understand the Senator, you have to understand his history here

Pete Buttigieg believed he could steal some delegates from Sanders' home town (EPA)

Democratic frontrunner Senator Bernie Sanders is planning to spend Super Tuesday in his home state of Vermont, jamming out at an election night rally with two members of the homegrown band Phish.

Sanders is expected to dominate in his home state. But could another candidate win more than 15 per cent of the vote, the minimum needed to deny him an all-out win in his own backyard?

Pete Buttigieg thought so.

On February 25th, less than a week before dropping out of the race, Buttigieg was targeting Vermont as a “huge opportunity to minimize Sanders’ margin,” according to an internal campaign memo. The memo recommended spending more than $100,000 in TV and digital ads to boost his chances of taking some of Vermont’s 16 delegates.

The Buttigieg campaign’s strategy was based on a poll that showed him winning 13 per cent of the vote, the highest of any non-Sanders candidate. About half of the respondents — 51 per cent, to be exact — said they’d vote for Sanders.

Elizabeth Warren got 9 per cent, Michael Bloomberg got 7 per cent, Joe Biden got 5 per cent, Amy Klobuchar got 4 per cent and Andrew Yang got 2 per cent.

The VPR-Vermont PBS 2020 poll is one of the only opportunities to get a sneak peak of the March election. But one poll makes for a very limited sneak peak.

The pollsters conducted their survey between February 4th and February 10th, shortly after the Iowa caucuses. The race for the Democratic nomination has had some major shake-ups since then. Yang ended his campaign. Bloomberg bombed his first appearance on the debate stage after spending nearly half a billion dollars of his own money. Sanders won two states.

Then Biden won resoundingly in South Carolina. Buttigieg and Klobuchar dropped out and endorsed the former VP.

If the poll was repeated on the eve of Super Tuesday, the results would possibly be very different.

Nationally, Buttigieg and Klobuchar exiting the race is expected to boost Biden. In Vermont, their departures may shift enough voters to Biden, Bloomberg or Warren to earn them the 15 per cent they’d need to win a delegate or two from the state.

But it’s unclear just how likely that is.

Not all of Buttigieg and Klobuchar’s support will be available for other candidates. Early voting began in late January, so some votes are locked in.

And Bernie Sanders is immensely popular at home.

In 2016, he beat Hillary Clinton with 86 per cent of the vote in the Democratic primary. The state went for Clinton in the general, but Sanders still got more than 18,000 votes for president as a write-in candidate.

He’s a familiar name at the ballot box for Vermonters. He successfully ran for Senate three times, in 2006, 2012 and 2018, winning by more than 20 points each time. Before that, he won eight consecutive state-wide races for Vermont’s one House of Representatives seat.

But Sanders wasn’t always popular. He first dipped a toe into political waters in the 1970s, when he ran for Senate and for governor as a member of the leftist Liberty Union party. He never got more than 6.1 per cent of the vote.

But in 1981, he beat a Democrat in the race for mayor of Burlington by only 10 votes — and that win still shapes Vermont politics today.

Sanders may have narrowly beaten the Democratic candidate, but the party still controlled the city’s 13-member Board of Aldermen. The board fired his secretary and blocked his nominees from getting open city jobs. The fight even led to a lawsuit.

Sanders turned back to the ballot box, supporting progressive allies challenging his aldermen opponents. Three aldermen were unseated.

The coalition he’d inspired kept running for office in Burlington, Vermont’s biggest city. In 2000, they went state-wide as the Vermont Progressive Party.

Today, the party Sanders inspired is the most successful third party in the United States, winning seats in Vermont’s legislature. Vermonters also elected a Progressive, David Zuckerman, to the lieutenant governor’s office in 2016 — while also electing a Republican as governor.

How Super Tuesday plays out in Vermont will have little impact on the race overall. Vermont is the second-smallest state in the country by population – only Wyoming has fewer people. The 16 delegates up for grabs represent about 1 per cent of the total 1,357 delegates that will be awarded Tuesday.

But winning enough votes to earn Vermont delegates would still be a meaningful achievement for Sanders’ competitors.