Why did Dukakis perform relatively well in losing these solid republican states in a GOP landslide year? I presume South Dakota might have been due to the 1980’s “farm crisis” but he didn’t perform as well in neighboring North Dakota. I have no theory on why he only lost Montana by 5.87%? I also have to wonder did his campaign know these states were relatively close? I’m thinking not and thus no money went into them and electoral votes are small. Still it would have been interesting to see either flip that year. Any theories?....
There was a major drought in the Northern Great Plains that year, and this spread a farm crisis that had allowed even Mondale in 1984 to do relatively well in Iowa and adjacent areas. The most notable effect of this drought and farm crisis is that Blaine County on the Canadian border spoiled a perfect bellwether record since 1916 by voting for Dukakis by fifty-eight votes (1,460 to 1,402).
As to why Dukakis did not do as well in North Dakota as he had in South Dakota, no Democrat since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 had done better in ND than in SD, and I do not think any have since. Moreover, the vote trend in North Dakota was
7.49 percent as against South Dakota's
9.64 percent - not really a significant difference and not even detectable on the trend map:
Another factor in why Dukakis did relatively well in the Plains and relatively poorly in the East is that some elements of the Bush campaign, especially regarding black crime, were of little interest to people in the rural, white plains states but were very significant in places like Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey and Delaware.
Given that Dukakis was the first liberal Northeastern Democratic nominee for a long time, and liberal Northeasterners are disliked on the Plains, I have always though 1988 with the drought and farm crisis could have been much more of an 1896-style "deviating election" than it was.
