Describe a Mondale 84/Bush 88 voter?

[Bootes Void]

A convert to religious fundamentalism? Thats the most likely.

[darklordoftech]

A voter swayed by Atwater’s attacks on Dukakis.

[Matty]

someone from Tennessee

[Bootes Void]

someone from Tennessee

Nah this one is mostly old democrats dying of and lower black turnout with stable evangelical support for republicans. The south didn't change much between 1984 and 1988.

[TDAS04]

A Southerner, especially someone from GA or TN, who associated Mondale with Carter, and especially despised the New England ethnic Dukakis.

Also, exit polls showed Dukakis slightly underperforming Mondale among African Americans.  DC actually swung right.

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

1. White Southerners who given a choice between two non-natives in 84 voted for the Democrat out of residual party loyalty.

2. Nominally Republican Farmers and Agricultural sector workers who voted for Mondale in response to the farm crisis but decided to give Bush a chance in 88 because they saw him as sufficiently distant from Reagan. I know that Dukakis did respectably in areas like this but there was probably a minority who this describes as well.

[Chips]

A Southerner, especially someone from GA or TN, who associated Mondale with Carter, and especially despised the New England ethnic Dukakis.

Also, exit polls showed Dukakis slightly underperforming Mondale among African Americans.  DC actually swung right.

This, honestly.

[Karenthecomputer]

A Southerner, especially someone from GA or TN, who associated Mondale with Carter, and especially despised the New England ethnic Dukakis.

Also, exit polls showed Dukakis slightly underperforming Mondale among African Americans.  DC actually swung right.

This, honestly.

Definitely this. Another large swing was in Gadsden County Florida. Mondale won it by 16 but Dukakis only won it by 3.

[Karenthecomputer]

someone from Tennessee

Nah this one is mostly old democrats dying of and lower black turnout with stable evangelical support for republicans. The south didn't change much between 1984 and 1988.

Actually, I think there may have been a number of Dems in Tennessee who supported Al Gore in the primary but voted Bush in November.

Al Gore supporters were the original PUMAs

[Calthrina950]

A Southerner, especially someone from GA or TN, who associated Mondale with Carter, and especially despised the New England ethnic Dukakis.

Also, exit polls showed Dukakis slightly underperforming Mondale among African Americans.  DC actually swung right.

That may also happen to explain the results in those Georgia and Tennessee counties that flipped to Bush. Reagan, as I've noted elsewhere, was very unpopular with black voters. It is interesting that Bush managed to improve among them, if only marginally, despite the Willie Horton ad. Perhaps this is the analogue to how Trump managed to improve among blacks in 2020 despite Charlottesville and Floyd.

[sting in the rafters]

Appalachian Democrat who disliked Dukakis's left-leaning solutions to the national crime wave?

[Alben Barkley]

There were a few Mondale-Bush counties in the South. So the "Southerner who associated Mondale with Carter and/or voted for him out of residual Democratic loyalty" explanation is probably accurate.