[10][11][12] Meyer formed the Liberty Union Party at a meeting in his home with Peter Diamondstone, Dennis Morrisseau, and twenty other people on June 27, 1970.

[25][26][27] During his mayoral campaign, Sanders formed the Independent Coalition which according to Richard Sartelle was to bring working people, students, college faculty, union members, and all independent-minded citizens together.

Sartelle ran with the support of the Independent Coalition for a seat on the city council from the 4th district, but was defeated by the Republican nominee.

[54][55] The Franklin County Independent Coalition was also formed in 1990, to support Sanders' campaign for a seat in the United States House of Representatives during the 1990 election.

The organization was founded by independent candidates for seats in the state house and Neil Bean, who was an independent member of the St. Albans city council and also grew out of Jeff Weaver's campaign for mayor of St. Albans and Jerry Colby's 1988 and 1990 campaigns for a seat in the Vermont Senate.

[62] The coalition started holding caucuses in twenty-five towns in October 1999, to form a political party.

[63] The Vermont Progressive Party was formally created after organizing in sixteen communities[64] and held its first convention on July 9, 2000.

[68] Emma Mulvaney-Stanak was the only Progressive member of the fourteen-member city council following the resignation of Marisa Caldwell in 2010, which was the lowest number for the party since 1981.

[71] David Zuckerman was elected lieutenant governor after he used electoral fusion to receive both the Democratic and Progressive nominations.

Mollie Burke and Heather Surprenant did not seek reelection with the Progressive ballot line in the 2022 state house elections and solely ran as Democrats.

Other major policy platforms are renewable energy programs and a phase-out of nuclear energy, public transportation proposals including one for a high-speed rail system, criminal justice reforms directed at reducing the state's prison population and better protecting convicts' rights, the creation of programs to end homelessness in the state, ending the War on Drugs and repealing No Child Left Behind and ending the focus on standardized testing in the school system.

Economically, the party also calls for converting the minimum wage to a living wage and having it tied to inflation rates, having the economy focus on small and local businesses, empowerment of worker cooperatives and publicly owned companies as democratic alternatives to multi-national corporations and to decentralize the economy, for the strengthening of state law to protect the right to unionize, for implementing a progressive income tax and repealing the Capital Gains Tax Exemption and residential education property tax, and for all trade to be subject to international standards on human rights.

Statewide office Vermont Senate Vermont House of Representatives The current chair of the party's State Committee is State Senator and former Gubernatorial nominee and Congressional candidate Anthony Pollina, and the current vice-chair, Marielle Blais, was first elected in 2019.

The position of executive director was added in 2011, and since 2015 has been the party's only paid staff, and has been occupied by Joshua Wronski.