I imagine that:
- Dukakis would have probably only carried Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, unionized West Virginia and Minnesota
- We would have in Blaine County, Montana, a perfect 100-year bellwether county and with Sargent County, North Dakota a perfect 65-year bellwether as of 2017
The farm crisis of 1988 had political effects all across to the west coast – at least to Eastern Washington where Dukakis won Asotin County and Pend Orielle County, which were never carried by Gore, Kerry, Obama or Hilary Clinton. He also tied with Bush in Ferry County – solidly Republican since 2000 but only Pacific Northwestern county won by Al Smith, which suggests much less anti-Catholicism than typical for the region. That Dukakis carried Washington despite losing Kitsap and Snohomish Counties, which have voted Democratic in every other election since 1932 except 1972 and Reagan’s two landslides, demonstrates his dependence on support form the eastern farm counties during the farm crisis.
The same is true for Oregon, if not to the same extent, though Dole and Bush did take over its rural counties much more than even eastern Washington after 1992.
With regard to the bellwether sequence Blaine County, MT would presumably have achieved without the farm crisis, it’s interesting that the 1988 election marks the last of a 100-year bellwether sequence in Central Oregon’s Crook County, which has become solidly Republican since 1992 but previously voted for a losing candidate when supporting Grover Cleveland in 1988.
