Did Willie Horton swing Maryland?

[Fuzzy Bear]

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.