How did George Bush win New Jersey so handily in 1988?
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  How did George Bush win New Jersey so handily in 1988?
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Author Topic: How did George Bush win New Jersey so handily in 1988?  (Read 4304 times)
Paul Weller
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« on: May 21, 2017, 03:29:27 PM »

Bush won New Jersey in 1988 by 13.6%. Even though New Jersey was a Republican leaning state at the time, this performance by Bush was much better than the performance of other Republicans in New Jersey who had won the state in a non landslide election. In 1968, Nixon won New Jersey by just 2.1%. And in 1976, Ford carried the state by only 2.2%. Also, in 1992 New Jersey swung Democratic by 16%.
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OSR stands with Israel
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« Reply #1 on: May 21, 2017, 03:38:39 PM »

Cause 1988 was an landslide victory for bush
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MIKESOWELL
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« Reply #2 on: May 21, 2017, 03:41:00 PM »

Bush did especially well with suburban voters that year.
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Paul Weller
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« Reply #3 on: May 21, 2017, 03:46:13 PM »

Cause 1988 was an landslide victory for bush
The popular vote was not a landslide.
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SingingAnalyst
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« Reply #4 on: May 22, 2017, 09:48:31 AM »

If I had to guess, I'd say (1) the Northeast still had a lot of ancestral Republicanism which expressed itself; (2) those in NYC's NJ suburbs were put off by Dukakis' "liberalism" as many suburbanites were in the '80s; (3) Dukakis was unpopular among conservative Catholics in the state for his stand on abortion and the death penalty; and (4) Jewish voters still gave Bush around 30%, much better than any subsequent GOP Presidential candidate.
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The_Doctor
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« Reply #5 on: May 22, 2017, 10:18:59 AM »

NJ was historically Republican from the 40s to the 80s for President (relatively to the nation). It went Republican everytime between 1948 and 1988 except 1960-1964. Could be white suburbanite voters embracing the northeastern Republican establishment.
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RINO Tom
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« Reply #6 on: May 22, 2017, 10:24:30 AM »

Somewhat relevant (though not entirely the whole story by any means) that New Jersey in 1990 was 79% White, whereas by 2000 it was only 72.6% White and is now 68.6% White...

People really make a foolish assumption that these states were similar places to their current incarnations when analyzing how our political boundaries have changed.  A red state becoming a blue state doesn't necessarily mean that the TYPES of voters who made it a red state have stopped voting Republican; it might mean that the makeup of the state's electorate has fundamentally changed.
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Doimper
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« Reply #7 on: May 22, 2017, 11:44:35 AM »

Bush did especially well with suburban voters that year.

Pretty much this. Bush really struck a chord with suburban voters terrified of finding a Willie Horton in their backyard, which is also why he was able to pull out a win in Maryland.
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White Trash
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« Reply #8 on: May 22, 2017, 01:45:55 PM »

Bush did especially well with suburban voters that year.

Pretty much this. Bush really struck a chord with suburban voters terrified of finding a Willie Horton in their backyard, which is also why he was able to pull out a win in Maryland.
Funny how that rhetoric really struck a chord with "Moderate Hero Smiley FF" suburbanites, while Coal Country stayed strong for the Democrats.
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The Govanah Jake
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« Reply #9 on: May 22, 2017, 01:48:11 PM »

A combination of Dukakis doing extremely bad in the suburbs (In which NJ is a state of it) and the fact that up til that point NJ was a pretty republican leaning state.
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Matty
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« Reply #10 on: May 22, 2017, 01:48:45 PM »

Bush did especially well with suburban voters that year.

Pretty much this. Bush really struck a chord with suburban voters terrified of finding a Willie Horton in their backyard, which is also why he was able to pull out a win in Maryland.
Funny how that rhetoric really struck a chord with "Moderate Hero Smiley FF" suburbanites, while Coal Country stayed strong for the Democrats.

coal country's loyalty to the democrats during the reagan revolution is one of the most amazing facts in american political history. Reagan got his butt handed to him in eastern kentucky, and HW Bush likewise got mauled there.

I do not get it.
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Sumner 1868
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« Reply #11 on: May 22, 2017, 02:00:26 PM »

Bush did especially well with suburban voters that year.

Pretty much this. Bush really struck a chord with suburban voters terrified of finding a Willie Horton in their backyard, which is also why he was able to pull out a win in Maryland.
Funny how that rhetoric really struck a chord with "Moderate Hero Smiley FF" suburbanites, while Coal Country stayed strong for the Democrats.

coal country's loyalty to the democrats during the reagan revolution is one of the most amazing facts in american political history. Reagan got his butt handed to him in eastern kentucky, and HW Bush likewise got mauled there.

I do not get it.

Why would they vote for the governing party under who they lost 53% of their jobs? Child poverty in McDowell County alone rose from 31% in 1980 to 50.3% in 1990. Not very morning in America. It's no wonder they only became receptive to Republicans when things deteriorated even worse in the Slick Willie era.
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Indy Texas
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« Reply #12 on: May 27, 2017, 11:20:57 PM »

Bush did especially well with suburban voters that year.

Pretty much this. Bush really struck a chord with suburban voters terrified of finding a Willie Horton in their backyard, which is also why he was able to pull out a win in Maryland.
Funny how that rhetoric really struck a chord with "Moderate Hero Smiley FF" suburbanites, while Coal Country stayed strong for the Democrats.

Urban crime (whether the actual occurrence of it or the mere perception of it) resulted in a tremendous amount of suburban white panic that played a significant role in presidential elections from 1968 to 1992.

Appalachia, being heavily rural and very racially homogenous, wasn't fertile ground for it.

New Jersey is a very suburban state and in 1988 was full of people who either left NYC during the nightmare dysfunction years of the '70s or were fearful of it for that reason. Similar story in Connecticut, which Bush also won.

Maryland is also a very suburban state abutting a heavily black Baltimore and DC - Bush was the last Republican to win that state.

1988 was basically an election where white suburbanites were convinced that crazed black men were going to break into their houses, steal their stuff and rape them or their wives/daughters, and Dukakis wasn't "tough on crime" enough to keep that from happening.
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hopper
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« Reply #13 on: May 28, 2017, 08:25:38 PM »
« Edited: May 28, 2017, 08:29:36 PM by hopper »

Somewhat relevant (though not entirely the whole story by any means) that New Jersey in 1990 was 79% White, whereas by 2000 it was only 72.6% White and is now 68.6% White...

People really make a foolish assumption that these states were similar places to their current incarnations when analyzing how our political boundaries have changed.  A red state becoming a blue state doesn't necessarily mean that the TYPES of voters who made it a red state have stopped voting Republican; it might mean that the makeup of the state's electorate has fundamentally changed.

Demographics of New Jersey per US Quickfacts 2015:

56.2% Non-Hispanic White
72.6% White Alone(Including White Hispanics I would guess)
19.7% Hispanic or Latino'
14.8% Black or African-American
  9.7% Asian
  2.1% Two or more races
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Tekken_Guy
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« Reply #14 on: May 29, 2017, 02:08:58 AM »

NJ didn't really become a Democratic stronghold until later on, when minority population rapidly grew, plus suburbanites (especially wealthy ones) went more liberal as the GOP went conservative.
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darklordoftech
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« Reply #15 on: July 04, 2017, 04:33:16 PM »
« Edited: July 04, 2017, 05:07:23 PM by darklordoftech »

What did this mean? His softness on crime? That he was a hippie? That he was a socialist? That he was pro-choice? That he supported gun control? All of the above?

Anyway, I suspect that Anita Hill turned some Willie Horton voters against Bush.
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Arbitrage1980
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« Reply #16 on: July 05, 2017, 03:32:55 PM »

Bush did especially well with suburban voters that year.

Pretty much this. Bush really struck a chord with suburban voters terrified of finding a Willie Horton in their backyard, which is also why he was able to pull out a win in Maryland.
Funny how that rhetoric really struck a chord with "Moderate Hero Smiley FF" suburbanites, while Coal Country stayed strong for the Democrats.

Urban crime (whether the actual occurrence of it or the mere perception of it) resulted in a tremendous amount of suburban white panic that played a significant role in presidential elections from 1968 to 1992.

Appalachia, being heavily rural and very racially homogenous, wasn't fertile ground for it.

New Jersey is a very suburban state and in 1988 was full of people who either left NYC during the nightmare dysfunction years of the '70s or were fearful of it for that reason. Similar story in Connecticut, which Bush also won.

Maryland is also a very suburban state abutting a heavily black Baltimore and DC - Bush was the last Republican to win that state.

1988 was basically an election where white suburbanites were convinced that crazed black men were going to break into their houses, steal their stuff and rape them or their wives/daughters, and Dukakis wasn't "tough on crime" enough to keep that from happening.

Given that crime was super high during the 70s and 80s, the fears were legitimate. Crime was a top 3 issue for voters, something that is unthinkable today. Bill Clinton deserves a lot of credit for helping to reduce crime and taking this issue away from the GOP, thus allowing the Democrats to win over states such as MD, NJ, CT, CA, IL, in presidential elections. 1992 was a re-alignment election.
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Sumner 1868
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« Reply #17 on: July 05, 2017, 05:07:30 PM »

Bill Clinton deserves a lot of credit for helping to reduce crime

No. Crime rates had already been slowing falling for a couple years before he took office and the "solution" he came up with was not worth it any perceived "benefit" that came.
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Mr. Smith
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« Reply #18 on: July 05, 2017, 05:28:55 PM »

Better question, why the YUGE margins in Florida, and why didn't it flip in '92?
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Lord Admirale
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« Reply #19 on: July 06, 2017, 10:16:21 PM »

New Jersey was still a Republican stronghold in 1988.
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Fuzzy Stands With His Friend, Chairman Sanchez
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« Reply #20 on: July 10, 2017, 10:19:02 PM »

NJ didn't really become a Democratic stronghold until later on, when minority population rapidly grew, plus suburbanites (especially wealthy ones) went more liberal as the GOP went conservative.

1988 was the year of "Read my lips:  NO NEW TAXES."  Never underestimate the power of a tax issue to unite and mobilize suburban Republican voters.

The big issue of New Jersey politics in the 1960s and 1970s was the imposition of an income tax.  Democrats and Republicans both opposed it, but the movement for it became stronger because property taxes were becoming unbearably high in New Jersey.  Finally, in the mid-1970s, Democratic Governor Brendan Byrne signed a state income tax into law; he was only re-elected in 1977 because of the sheer incompetence of Republican Gubenatorial nominee State Sen. Raymond Bateman.  But the damage had been done. 

The 1988 New Jersey suburbanites who voted for Bush remembered the promise of no state income tax, and remember it being broken.  New Jersey is way past this now, but in 1988, they were still smarting from it, and New Jersey had a more white electorate than it does now.  It also had a lot of white Reagan Democrats in its cities who voted Democratic in local elections, but voted GOP for President. 
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SingingAnalyst
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« Reply #21 on: July 11, 2017, 05:51:22 PM »

Bill Clinton deserves a lot of credit for helping to reduce crime

No. Crime rates had already been slowing falling for a couple years before he took office and the "solution" he came up with was not worth it any perceived "benefit" that came.
Both are half right. Violent crime rate peaked in 1991, but didn't start falling precipitously until 1994-1999; it fell much slower after 1999.
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Obama-Biden Democrat
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« Reply #22 on: July 11, 2017, 06:07:56 PM »

Bush Sr was also the last 'Tory' candidate. He was not some insane frothing at the mouth nut that would turn off northern suburbanites. The Republican party then was the party of the Chamber of Commerce and good government. Now it is the party of Trump, Tea Party jihadism , government shutdowns and debt defaults. I can see why a NJ suburbanite in 1988 might back Bush Sr, but would be totally disgusted by today's Republican party.
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Obama-Biden Democrat
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« Reply #23 on: July 11, 2017, 06:12:55 PM »
« Edited: July 11, 2017, 06:15:01 PM by Zyzz »

Bill Clinton deserves a lot of credit for helping to reduce crime

No. Crime rates had already been slowing falling for a couple years before he took office and the "solution" he came up with was not worth it any perceived "benefit" that came.
Both are half right. Violent crime rate peaked in 1991, but didn't start falling precipitously until 1994-1999; it fell much slower after 1999.

Bill Clinton takes a lot of heat for his tough on crime stances. But by implementing those measures during the drastic falling of the crime rates in the 90's and early 2000's has lead to the crime issue being completely dead. Obama would not have been able to win in 1988 , the crime issue was a deeply racially tinged nasty issue below the surface then. By 2008, the racially tinged crime issue was dead, in part to Bill Clinton who had removed it as a issue in the 90's. I get the feeling that the average white suburbanite in the 1980's was terrified of black people raping and pillaging their homes and neighbourhoods.
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darklordoftech
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« Reply #24 on: July 12, 2017, 07:30:17 PM »
« Edited: July 12, 2017, 07:42:56 PM by darklordoftech »

Bush Sr was also the last 'Tory' candidate. He was not some insane frothing at the mouth nut that would turn off northern suburbanites. The Republican party then was the party of the Chamber of Commerce and good government. Now it is the party of Trump, Tea Party jihadism , government shutdowns and debt defaults. I can see why a NJ suburbanite in 1988 might back Bush Sr, but would be totally disgusted by today's Republican party.
This describes my grandfather. He had been a Republican voting businessman all his life, but then in 1994 the GOP went off the deep end with Gingrich's speakership, a Dole Presidency would give the GOP control of all three branches of government, and he retired in 1996, so he voted for Clinton in the 1996 election. He would go on to be a harsh critic of Dubya. I think the early 90s recession combined with the GOP's takeover of the House in 1994 turned many fiscally conservative blue state voters against the GOP. No longer did the fear of the Democrat-controlled House raising taxes, wages, union strength, etc. keep fiscal conservatives voting Republican.
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