The 1988 United States presidential election in Georgia took place on November 8, 1988. All 50 states and the District of Columbia were part of the 1988 United States presidential election. Georgia voters chose 12 electors to the Electoral College, which selected the president and vice president. Georgia was won by incumbent Vice President George H. W. Bush of Texas, who was running against Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. Bush ran with Indiana Senator Dan Quayle as vice president, and Dukakis ran with Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen.
Only two counties failed to give one of the major party nominees an outright majority: Clarke, which gave Dukakis a narrow plurality, and Bibb, which gave Bush a narrow plurality. Bush won four counties that had voted for Walter Mondale in 1984, out of only seven such counties nationwide. Georgia was one of only two states that Bush carried in 1988 which had voted for Jimmy Carter in 1980, the other being Maryland.
Background
Georgia was the only former Confederate state that supported the Democratic presidential nominee in any of the 1980, 1984, and 1988 presidential elections. In 1986, 37% of white voters identified as Democrats.
Mack Mattingly's election to the U.S. Senate in 1980 made him the first Republican statewide official since Reconstruction, but he was defeated by Wyche Fowler in the 1986 election. However, the Republicans increased their seat total in the Georgia General Assembly from 28 to 48 seats between 1980 and 1989.
Primaries
Democratic primary
The racial composition of the Democratic primary electorate was 64% white and 36% black. Al Gore won 53% of the white vote. Jesse Jackson won with a plurality of the vote.
Republican primary
Among white voters, 49% participated in the Republican primary.
George H. W. Bush won Georgia in the Republican primary, but supporters of Pat Robertson staged a walkout of the state's convention in protest of the delegate selection. Two competing delegate slates were sent to the Republican National Convention. The Georgian delegation was divided equally between the Bush and Robertson supporters to avoid controversy, but John Stuckey Jr., a Bush supporter and chair of the Georgia Republican Party, threatened to resign in protest of the deal. The Robertson delegates attempted to have Brant Frost IV, Robertson's campaign chair for Georgia, be selected as the chair of the Georgia delegation, but was rejected in favor of U.S. Representative Pat Swindall.
Georgia's national committeeman was sought by the Bush-backed Newt Gingrich, Robertson-backed incumbent Carl Gillis, and Joe Rogers. Gillis won the position. Bush's campaign formed a twenty-one-member steering committee for Georgia, which only included two supporters of Robertson. Gillis operated a separate Bush campaign in southern Georgia.
Campaign
Speaker Tom Murphy initially supported Dukakis, but withdrew his support in October due to his stance on capital punishment and gun control. Lester Maddox, a former Democratic governor, criticized Dukakis as a "socialist and revolutionary leftist" and promised to conduct an anti-Dukakis campaign in six southern states. Dukakis planned on conducting a tour of the state in October, but it was canceled as scheduling conflicts prevented state Democratic leaders from joining him.
Bush won 134 counties and all of the metropolitan areas in the state. Dukakis won 25 counties, 15 of which had a majority black population and six of which had a black population of 40%-50%. Among white voters, 72% supported Bush, while 27% supported Dukakis. However, the Democrats retained control of the state legislature and nine of the state's ten seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Results
Results by county
Counties that flipped from Republican to Democratic
- Clarke
- DeKalb
- Pulaski
- Randolph
Counties that flipped from Democratic to Republican
- Bibb
- Mitchell
- Taylor
- Telfair
- Washington