1988 United States presidential election

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51st presidential election
November 8, 1988
			Republican Party
			George HW Bush / Dan Quayle
			electors					426
			be right				48.886.097
									53.4%
			Democratic Party
			Michael Dukakis / Lloyd Bentsen
			electors					111
			be right				41,809,074
									45.7%
Election results by state
40 states   Bush / Quayle						10 states + DC   Dukakis / Bentsen
President of the United States
Before the election Ronald Reagan Republican Party						Elected George HW Bush Republican Party

The 51st election of the President of the United States of America took place on November 8, 1988 . President Ronald Reagan was unable to run after two terms. The then Vice President George HW Bush was elected , who prevailed against the Governor of Massachusetts Michael Dukakis and thus became the 41st President of the United States.

Since the 1988 presidential election, no candidate has been able to outperform George Bush in terms of either the popular vote or electoral votes .

Starting position

The 1988 presidential election was considered the most open-ended in 20 years, as for the first time since 1968 there was no incumbent president up for re-election. The Republicans trusted in the strong global position of the USA (without being involved in a war) and the robust economic situation. They also hoped that President Ronald Reagan's still high popularity ratings would also benefit the new Republican candidate. The Democrats saw themselves on the upswing with the recovery of the Senate majority in the 1986 congressional elections and hoped that the Iran-Contra affair had hurt the Republicans as a whole.

republican

The Republican favorite was Vice President George Bush , who was defeated by Ronald Reagan within the party in 1980 , but since then has held the position of deputy to a great extent. However, for more than 150 years no incumbent vice president had succeeded in winning the presidency through an election. The closest competitor was Senator Bob Dole from Kansas , who after two failed attempts in 1976 (defeat as vice presidential candidate together with Gerald Ford ) and 1980 (eliminated early in the primary elections) made a third attempt at the White House . The Congressman Jack Kemp and the televangelist Pat Robertson have been granted only a small outside chance.

Dole won the first primary in Iowa , but the real surprise was that Bush was only third behind Robertson. Dole now hoped with another win in New Hampshire to force a preliminary decision, but had to accept a significant defeat. He attributed this to Bush's election campaigns, which incorrectly assumed that as president he might be willing to approve tax increases. This was not only vehemently denied by Dole, he also called on the Vice President to “stop spreading lies” about him in the future, a choice of words that aroused considerable displeasure within the party. Dole was able to win the primaries in South Dakota and Minnesota , but he lost in South Carolina and on the following " Super Tuesday " in all other primaries in the south against Bush. His election campaign now got into a serious - also financial - crisis and he was forced to fire part of his campaign team. However, he still hoped for a comeback in the industrialized countries of the north. However, when this failed to materialize and he also lost the Illinois primary against Bush, he ended his campaign. Since Kemp and Robertson, who was surprisingly weak in the south, had no chance against Bush, his nomination as a Republican presidential candidate was certain early on.

Shortly before the start of the party congress, Bush decided in favor of the relatively young, conservative Senator Dan Quayle as the vice-presidential candidate, in the hope that this would also win over the right wing of the party, which always kept a certain distance from Bush. In the press, however, Quayle's political inexperience was criticized, as well as the fact that he had escaped combat action in the Vietnam War by taking advantage of family connections by being drafted into the National Guard .

Democrats

The democratic pre-election campaign was initially characterized by the non-appearance or the early retirement of several candidates who were seen as having good opportunities. As early as late 1985, Senator Edward Kennedy declared that he was not a candidate for the 1988 presidency. The New York Governor Mario Cuomo , whose speech at the 1984 party congress excited many delegates, also turned down a candidacy. The favorite was the ex-Senator from Colorado , who was surprisingly strong in 1984, Gary Hart , who, however, had to give up shortly after the official announcement of his candidacy in April 1987 because of a sex scandal. Finally, Senator Joe Biden was forced to end his campaign prematurely over allegations of plagiarism . It had become known that his standard speech was almost literally a speech by UK Labor leader Neil Kinnock . As the rest of the Democratic candidate field - Senators Al Gore ( Tennessee ) and Paul M. Simon ( Illinois ), Governor Michael Dukakis ( Massachusetts ), Congressman Dick Gephardt ( Missouri ), ex-Commerce Secretary Bruce Babbitt and African-American civil rights campaigner Jesse Jackson - was viewed as rather weak, speculation soon began in the media about whether a prominent Democratic senator or governor might join the primary campaign late. Among other things, the name of the governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton was mentioned , who, however - like all the others named - rejected a candidacy.

The first Iowa area code won Gephardt, who advocated a protectionist trade policy and was supported by some unions. In New Hampshire, however, Dukakis was successful, who also showed strength on "Super Tuesday" in the south, while Gephardt was largely unsuccessful here. After the unions then stopped their support for Gephardt and a comeback attempt in Michigan failed, Gephardt was forced to give up. Dukakis, on the other hand, had two new opponents in the south who had only seriously started their election campaign here and who were also able to celebrate respectable successes on “Super Tuesday”: Senator Al Gore and Jesse Jackson. While Gore did not succeed in gaining a clear profile and he had to give up after a heavy defeat in New York, Jackson was able to win over so many voters - especially from the workforce - that he after a surprising victory briefly became serious competition for Dukakis in Michigan , and an African-American presidential candidate first moved into the realm of possibility. However, the media were now increasingly interested in Jackson's left-wing political program, which made many Democrats fear that he would suffer a debacle similar to that of George McGovern in 1972 and thus lead to the third serious election defeat in a row. As a result, many undecided votes cast Dukakis in the last primaries and after a clear victory in California, the nomination could no longer be taken from him.

When selecting the vice-presidential candidate, Dukakis skipped Jackson and instead opted for the Texan Senator Lloyd Bentsen , hoping to win votes in the South on the one hand and to awaken reminiscences of the successful John F. Kennedy / Lyndon B. Johnson candidate team on the other came from Massachusetts or Texas .

Election campaign

The actual presidential election campaign began with the Democratic Party Congress in Atlanta , of which the speech of the nominated candidate Dukakis was less remembered than the statement by the later Texas Governor Ann Richards that George Bush was "born with a golden spoon in his mouth" and therefore couldn't Show understanding for the socially disadvantaged, whom the state has to help. Bush countered this at the Republican party congress in Miami, "Read my lips: no new taxes!" In this way he spoke out against the expansion of state benefits, but also against additional burdens on taxpayers.

In addition to budget policy, the issue of fighting crime became the second central election campaign issue, triggered by the case of Willie Horton , an African American sentenced to life imprisonment for robbery and murder and who - during Dukakis' tenure as governor - was on leave to escape, a case that was heavily discussed by the Republicans Raped wife and severely abused her husband before he could be caught. Admittedly, such prison leave had already been introduced by a Republican predecessor of Dukakis' and was also common in numerous other states, but Dukakis had advocated extending the corresponding program to include serious criminals, including murderers. The issue increasingly weighed on Dukakis' election campaign, especially after the second televised debate in which he - as a declared opponent of the death penalty - was asked if he would change his mind on the matter if his wife was a victim of rape and murder. Dukakis denied this very personal (and therefore later criticized) question without a sign of personal concern with reference to various crime statistics, which made him appear cold and callous in front of an audience of millions.

In contrast, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen scored points in the TV debate with his Republican counterpart Dan Quayle. When he compared his political experience with that of President John F. (“Jack”) Kennedy when he took office, Bentsen responded coolly, “Senator, I worked with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are not Jack Kennedy, ”which was greeted with thunderous applause from the audience. However, the success of Bentsen was of little use to Dukakis, with some voters rather the impression that Bentsen might have been the better candidate for the presidency, as he appeared overall "more presidential" than Dukakis. Several - unfortunate - photos of Dukakis heavily helmeted on an armored personnel carrier may have contributed to this impression. He obviously hoped to create the impression of a strong commander-in-chief, but the corresponding pictures were often seen as put on, in some cases even felt as ridiculous.

Shortly before election day, all polling institutes predicted a clear election victory for the Republicans, after Dukakis was still in the lead at the beginning of the election campaign and was roughly equal after the party congresses.

Result

George Bush won the election with an absolute majority of the total votes. He received 48,886,597 (53.37%) of the total 91,594,686 votes cast, while Dukakis received a total of only 41,809,476 (45.6%) votes. In optional decisive electoral college , the choice clearly failed. Bush got 426 votes, Dukakis got just 111 votes. A Democratic member of the quorum from West Virginia voted for Dukakis' vice-presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen as president to protest the electoral process.

As more detailed analyzes of the election results showed, Bush owed his clear victory above all to the good results in the suburbs (where the question of the fight against crime may have played a decisive role), the great successes in the northeast and the - narrow - victory in California. In contrast, its lead in the agricultural states of the Midwest fell short of expectations, possibly a consequence of the agricultural crisis of the 1980s, which was obviously blamed on the Republicans.

candidate	Political party	be right		electors
		number	percent
George Bush	republican	48,886,597	53.37%	426
Michael Dukakis	democrat	41,809,476	45.67%	111
Lloyd Bentsen	democrat		0.0%	1
Ron Paul	Libertarian	431,750	0.47%	-
Lenora Fulani	New Alliance		0.24%	-

Movies

• George HW Bush vs. Michael Dukakis . USA 2016, 41-minute documentary (CNN) by Kim Flitcroft for the series Race for the White House .

literature

• Donald Richard Deskins, Hanes Walton, Sherman C. Puckett: Presidential Elections, 1789-2008: County, State, and National Mapping of Election Data. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 2010, ISBN 978-0-472-11697-3 , pp. 488-497 (= Chapter 53: George W. Bush's Election. ).

Web links

Commons : 1988 US Presidential Election  - collection of images, videos, and audio files