1998 United States Senate election in Vermont
Results
Table:
General election results[4]

Party

Candidate

Votes

%

±%

Democratic

Patrick Leahy (incumbent)

154,567

72.22%

+18.05%

Republican

Fred Tuttle

48,051

22.45%

−20.90%

Libertarian

Hugh Douglas

4,199

1.96%

Independent

Barry Nelson

2,893

1.35%

Grassroots

Robert Melamede

2,459

1.15%

Liberty Union

Jerry Levy

1,238

0.58%

−1.21%

Write-ins

629

0.29%

Majority

106,516

49.77%

+38.95%

Turnout

214,036

Democratic hold

Swing

Based on the data table for '1998 United States Senate election in Vermont' in the 'Results' section, create one factual sentence about the highlighted cells, without adding extra data and return it as JSON: {"answer": "YOUR ANSWER"}.