California-1988

[sg0508]

It was obviously the last hurrah for the GOP at the presidential level.  Besides the Reagan coattail effect (being his home state) and the possibility that many voters stayed home since the race was called prior to 11 eastern time, what enabled George Bush to hang on there? Obviously, LA County was a far difference place demographically then compared to now.

[Indy Texas]

The state was whiter back then and more dependent on defense and aerospace contractors as a portion of their economy. You also had a Republican Party that was more receptive to moderate voters and you had urban residents in LA and to an extent SF who were concerned about urban crime and viewed the GOP as more able to handle that.

[sg0508]

The old adage for CA'88 was "the final gift from Reagan".

[Liberalrocks]

While I know it was still a "swing state" in 1988, it still had to come as a huge blow to the Dukakis campaign to lose here. The state was still quite winnable even with Dukakis being a horrible candidate. The crime issue as previously mention likely helped to kill him in the suburbs particularly in LA County area where he needed and didn't get a much wider margin to cancel out Bushs huge margins in Orange and San Diego Counties.

Still it was a tight win for Bush and one could see what was coming as far as political demographic change in 1992.

[Bojack Horseman]

'88 may have been the last Presidential hurrah for the GOP, but the GOP was still winning California until '96. '92 was a big Democratic year in California, and yet in 1990, the Republicans won their third straight gubernatorial election with the election of Pete Wilson, and in '94, Republicans won control of the Assembly, re-elected Wilson, and passed an anti-immigration law that made Arizona's SB1070 look pale in comparison.

[CountyTy90]

I was going to start a California '88 post until I found this.

1988 is my favorite presidential election. I think it was really the last election in which most states were up for play. It was conceivable for Bush or Dukakis to win currently Democratic states like Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and most importantly California. Flip side, it was conceivable for Bush to win New York, Washington, and Oregon.

I wish we had a repeat of 1988!

But it's so fascinating to me the county level results in California. I mean... how in the hell did Bush only lose Los Angeles County by 5 points?!?! That's crazy. Now Republicans can't even break 30%. I would love to see a map of the county by which cities and Congressional districts Bush won.

Does anyone know any good books/articles about the '88 race in general and/or in California?

I've been watching old C-Span videos of the rallies and call in programs and am obsessed with '88.

[Heimdal]

I agree. The election of 1988 is a really interesting one. In a way you could call it a transformative election. It is the last Presidential Election of the Republican “Eisenhower-coalition” that had dominated American politics since 1952. With this coalition they were still able to win states Delaware, New Jersey, Vermont an Illinois.

On the other side of the spectrum you can see that the Democrats are still holding on to pieces of their old coalition. In just a few years a Northeastern Democrat would stand no chance of winning West Virginia, but party loyalty was still strong enough in 1988 to deliver the state to Dukakis.

I don’t believe in realignment theory. But if such a thing exists, then 1988 would be the last election before the realigning election of 1992. 

[historybuff]

I would love to see a map of the county by which cities and Congressional districts Bush won.

I don't have a map of this data but I did find the two links below which have data for Los Angeles County broken down by supervisorial district, congressional district, senatorial district, assembly district, board of equalization district, and cities.  If you look else where in this book you can find this for other counties and other elections in 1988.  Also, you can find this book for many other election years by searching the search bar at https://archive.org/.

Links:  https://archive.org/stream/statementofvote81988cali#page/30/mode/2up,
https://archive.org/stream/statementofvote81988cali#page/32/mode/2up

[Matty]

The 1988 election was HEAVY on the crime issue. In places like Los Angeles, people were really turned away by Dukakis's "soft" stance. That issue (combined obviously with Reagan love), might have carried the state for Bush. Keep in mind also that CA was far whiter in 88.

[pbrower2a]

In 1988 Michigan was the tipping-point state, the difference between 260 and 281 electoral votes.  Dukakis needed a shift of nearly 8% of the vote nationwide to win.

Crime was the proxy for "race" that year. Since then, liberals have gone from seeing crooks as victims of economic distress to unforgivable sociopaths.