4 0 62.5% 36.3% | 281,537 163,696 Start date November 8, 1988 | |
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The 1988 United States presidential election in New Hampshire took place on November 8, 1988 as part of the 1988 United States presidential election, which was held throughout all 50 states and D.C. Voters chose 8 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for President and Vice President.
New Hampshire voted for the Republican nominee, Vice President George H. W. Bush, over the Democratic nominee, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, by a landslide margin of 26.16%. Bush took 62.49% of the vote to Dukakis's 36.33%.
Compared to the rest of liberal New England, New Hampshire historically had a strong fiscal conservative streak to its politics, and Bush's pledge not to raise taxes played well to the state's anti-tax electorate. This election would prove to be the GOP's high point in New Hampshire, as the state gave Bush his second strongest win in the nation, behind only Utah.
In the following years, the state would drift to the left, on economic issues and especially on social issues. As the Republican Party moved to embrace the Christian right and became increasingly Southern, the GOP would suffer a rapid decline in its fortunes in New Hampshire. Despite the scale of Bush's victory in 1988, the state would flip to Democrat Bill Clinton just four years later in 1992, and the state has been Democratic-leaning ever since.
This was the last election in which a Republican presidential candidate won a majority of the vote in New Hampshire, although his son George W. Bush would eke out a narrow 48-47 plurality in 2000. The state has voted Democratic in every other election since.