U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, a Democrat, won reelection to a third term in Congress Tuesday night, beating Republican challenger Gerald Malloy.
The Associated Press called the race at 7:41 p.m.
Balint had maintained large leads in polling leading up to Election Day. With 28% of votes counted Tuesday, Balint led Malloy by over 30 percentage points, which is consistent with how she fared against Republican opponents in her last two races.
Speaking at the Vermont Democrats election night watch party in Burlington, Balint thanked Vermonters for sending her back to Washington for a third term.
"I'm going to continue to do what you have sent me there to do, which is to hold powerful people accountable, to make sure that we're ushering in an age of economic equality in this country, and so that young people in Vermont and across this country feel like they have a reason to believe in democracy again," she said.
Affordability was the central theme of the campaign this election. Balint, during a Vermont Public debate, blamed the war in Iran for higher prices at the gas pump, and took aim at President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which she said are hurting small businesses.
Malloy, an Army veteran and defense contractor, said during the debate that if elected, he’d work to recruit businesses to Vermont to create more career opportunities.
Malloy, who had made two previous bids for federal office and billed himself as a conservative Republican, sought to distance himself from Trump during this election. He criticized the war in Iran, and while he wasn’t in favor of abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, indicated he supported a less aggressive approach to immigration enforcement.
“I don’t think that the government should be trying to track down every single person who is not fully documented here in the United States — every hotel maid, every farmworker,” Malloy said during the Vermont Public debate.
The independent candidates on the ballot, Phoenix Altair, Adam Ortiz, Suzanne Seymour, and Ryan Walton each received about 1% of the vote, give or take, according to unofficial results.
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