The Recession hit the state hard.
The Farm crisis also hammered the state before that.
The 1980's GOP was really centered on making life better for the suburbs with lower taxes and indirectly cheaper commodities. The latter made life hell for farming, mining and extraction focused states leaving them as essentially "left behind" by the 1980's economy, which then got even worse when the whole economy went into recession.
As long as things were good though, Republicans did well in the suburban based states. Once that changed though, the Republicans had a problem in 1992 and Bill Clinton was able to appeal to both rural dissatisfaction and the suburbs.
However, wouldn’t Reagan’s and HW’s views on guns and abortion have helped them with rural voters?
