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.
