Was it expected before the election that Dukakis would do so well in rural areas?

[Matty]

Of course the farm crisis was going to hurt the incumbent party, but was it anticipated just how well Dukakis would do in the plains and places like iowa and Montana?

To this day Democratic presidents haven’t matched him in some of these places, not even bill clinton.

[NOVA Green]

Of course the farm crisis was going to hurt the incumbent party, but was it anticipated just how well Dukakis would do in the plains and places like iowa and Montana?

To this day Democratic presidents haven’t matched him in some of these places, not even bill clinton.

I remember following the national maps by state post DEM / PUB convention in '88 in Newsweek and US News and World Report showing Dukakis performing very well in many of these places.

Even places like Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas appeared to be polling very well into early October.

Deal with Dukakis surge in farming country wasn't really represented in many statewide polls in '88.

Recall a really decent article in Congressional Quarterly a couple months after the election that showed how extensive the swings were in farm country using county data.

[Liberalrocks]

In addition to Montana, South Dakota always really stood out to me. In just how close Dukakis got to carrying it. Mondale had been crushed there by Reagan in 84 but Iowa was much closer.  I know it’s only 3 electoral votes and was hardly worth an effort, but I wonder if the (horribly run) Dukakis campaign had any idea how close they were there and that it wasn’t going to be the normal +20 point GOP margin. Would have been quite the map had South Dakota been Democratic that year in an otherwise electoral college landslide.

[Matty]

In addition to Montana, South Dakota always really stood out to me. In just how close Dukakis got to carrying it. Mondale had been crushed there by Reagan in 84 but Iowa was much closer.  I know it’s only 3 electoral votes and was hardly worth an effort, but I wonder if the (horribly run) Dukakis campaign had any idea how close they were there and that it wasn’t going to be the normal +20 point GOP margin. Would have been quite the map had South Dakota been Democratic that year in an otherwise electoral college landslide.

Things must have been absolutely awful in some of these areas if usually reliable conservative Republicans crossed en masse to vote for a New England liberal

[NOVA Green]

In addition to the most obvious Dukakis over-performance in various parts of the rural parts of the Midwest and upper great plains, Dukakis was able to run really well in many non-agricultural based rural areas where there was still a strong resource based economic base.

The "Oil Patch" springs to mind in SE OK and along the Red River counties, parts of rural TX, the southern belt of Wyoming, as well as in some heavily timber dependent places in the Pacific Northwest.

Sure Jimmy Carter performed pretty well in some of these places in '76 as well, but in many ways '88 really exemplifies how Bush Senior was able to maintain solid holds in the suburbs while simultaneously massively bleeding support from Reagan in many parts of rural America.

Interestingly enough, Obama in '08 really came closest to Dukakis performance in the "Grain & Dairy belts", but getting whacked hard in energy dependent rural areas as well as many timber dependent communities.

[Calthrina950]

The Farm Crisis certainly benefited Dukakis, and it's possible that Bush's reputation as an upper-class, educated, suburban Republican (although he had lived in Texas for forty years by the time of the election), might have hurt him with some rural voters. But the swings varied by region. Dukakis improved significantly over Mondale in Kansas, Missouri, the Dakotas, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, and Montana, and of course flipped Iowa and Wisconsin, along with Oregon and Washington on the West Coast. But throughout much of the South, he only marginally improved over Mondale (i.e., Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia) and even did worse than him in Tennessee.