Did Willie Horton swing Maryland?
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  Did Willie Horton swing Maryland?
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Author Topic: Did Willie Horton swing Maryland?  (Read 2205 times)
mencken
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« on: March 07, 2017, 06:38:00 PM »

Maryland voted well to the right of how it voted in every other election in 1988. Is this due to Willie Horton having committed his crimes in that state?
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RI
realisticidealist
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« Reply #1 on: March 07, 2017, 09:03:38 PM »

Bush ran very well in suburbs across the country, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that he did well in Maryland.
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Matty
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« Reply #2 on: March 07, 2017, 10:27:29 PM »

Bush ran very well in suburbs across the country, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that he did well in Maryland.

Yea, Bush's margins in the suburbs were stunning in many cases.

OTOH, he shat the bed in rural Areas. In many cases, by startling magnitudes. Got destroyed in eastern oklahoma, almost lost the dakotas and montana, lost cajun parts of louisiana, did putrid in down state illinois and sourthwest virginia, just to name a few.
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NOVA Green
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« Reply #3 on: March 07, 2017, 10:49:35 PM »

Bush ran very well in suburbs across the country, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that he did well in Maryland.

Yea, Bush's margins in the suburbs were stunning in many cases.

OTOH, he shat the bed in rural Areas. In many cases, by startling magnitudes. Got destroyed in eastern oklahoma, almost lost the dakotas and montana, lost cajun parts of louisiana, did putrid in down state illinois and sourthwest virginia, just to name a few.

Awesome---- I liked you cleverly crafted sarcastic response regarding the Dukakis performance in rural areas....

I would additionally add the extremely poor performance that Dukakis experienced in East Texas, SE Oklahoma, Northern Missouri, not to even mention rural parts of Oregon and Washington State. ;

But really, to the OPs question and your response regarding George HW's performance in suburban areas that was definitively the case. You had a ton of people that voted Reagan in '84 loving their   "Bi-Partisan tax cuts". Bush Sr was perceived as a continuation of Reagan on economic issues, but less extreme on social and foreign policy.

Could Dukakis have won Maryland--- absolutely.

Was it the Whites in the 'burbs of DC, or a dramatic collapse in East Shore Maryland that caused the narrow loss? IDK.

Willie Horton may or may not have been the reason why Maryland went Republican in '88. It is important to note though, that as a state South of the Mason-Dixon line, George Wallace was able to bag almost 20% of the vote only a few decades back in '68, so there was an obvious ancestral "White Resentment vote" going back, many of whom were still alive and voting in Maryland in 1988.

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Phony Moderate
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« Reply #4 on: March 08, 2017, 09:50:20 AM »

Some gun issue was on the ballot too IIRC which brought out the conservative vote.
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RINO Tom
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« Reply #5 on: March 08, 2017, 01:04:27 PM »

Bush ran very well in suburbs across the country, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that he did well in Maryland.

Yea, Bush's margins in the suburbs were stunning in many cases.

OTOH, he shat the bed in rural Areas. In many cases, by startling magnitudes. Got destroyed in eastern oklahoma, almost lost the dakotas and montana, lost cajun parts of louisiana, did putrid in down state illinois and sourthwest virginia, just to name a few.

Despite the focus always being on "Chicago vs. Downstate," Downstate Illinois is FAR from a homogeneous region, especially back then.  Rural Central Illinois has always been rock-ribbed Republican, while rural Southern Illinois - which shares a LOT more in common culturally with Kentucky than it would the areas surrounding Champaign, for example - had a pretty strong Democratic tradition.  While his best areas were certainly the Chicago suburbs, "suburbs" of Peoria and the Bloomington-Normal area, he did just fine in the traditionally Republican Corn Belt counties in Northern and Central Illinois.  It really wasn't that surprising that a Democrat in the 1980s did well in Southern Illinois, even Dukakis.
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Sumner 1868
tara gilesbie
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« Reply #6 on: March 08, 2017, 03:54:23 PM »

It may have had more effect in Delaware.
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Fuzzy Stands With His Friend, Chairman Sanchez
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« Reply #7 on: March 08, 2017, 05:08:39 PM »

Bush 41 was the kind of patrician Republican that wealthy suburbanites liked.  Quayle was a preppy rich boy as well. 

I don't know that Willie Horton swung Maryland.  One thing that was true in 1988 was that (A) Reagan was still popular, and (B) Maryland was a state where it wasn't THAT long ago that there was contentiousness over court-ordered busing across city/suburban lines to achieve racial balance.  Then, too, Maryland did not have as large a black population as it does not.  Maryland is, right now, the 5th blackest state in America with only DC, MS, GA, and SC ahead of it, and it's right behind GA and SC.  It's at about 30% now, but it was only at 23% in 1988, which is a different electorate.  (Maryland was only 18% black in 1970; its demographics have changed significantly over time.) 

Incidentally, Washington, DC, at present, is only 51% black.  That's pretty amazing, isn't it?  What has happened in Washington, DC is "black flight"; black inner-city residents are leaving DC for MD and VA suburbs that are more affordable, and where the neighborhoods don't have the degree of problems in schools that DC schools have.  Note, however, that DC is no less Democratic than it was when it had an over 70% black population.  DC is such a lock for the Dems that it is kind of boring to follow its politics, but I do find it odd that the GOP hasn't budged the near-unanimous Democratic margins in DC even a little bit.
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CapoteMonster
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« Reply #8 on: March 08, 2017, 07:38:22 PM »

There's no doubt that it did. The revolving door/Willie Horton ads undercut Dukakis nationally in the polls after he ad been moderately leading and Bush won Maryland by a small margin.
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NOVA Green
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« Reply #9 on: March 08, 2017, 10:38:14 PM »

If you were around in 1988 and took one look at Dukakis, you just chuckled to yourself knowing that guy was not going to be president

I was a Jesse Jackson man myself in '88... Wink
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