The 1988 United States presidential election in Iowa took place on November 8, 1988, as part of the 1988 United States presidential election. Voters chose eight representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.
Iowa was won by Democratic Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts with 54.71% of the popular vote over Republican Vice President George H. W. Bush's 44.50%, a victory margin of 10.21%, which made Iowa exactly 18% more Democratic than the nation at large. A major reason why it voted so Democratic compared to the rest of the nation was the 1980s farm crisis. This made it one of 10 states (along with the District of Columbia) to vote for Dukakis, while Bush won a convincing electoral victory nationwide. Bush became the first Republican to ever win the presidency without carrying Iowa, a feat that would only be repeated once more, when his son George W. Bush lost the state in 2000 but won the national election by extremely narrow margins. George W. Bush would later carry the state in 2004, which made George H.W. Bush the only Republican to win the presidency without ever winning the state, as well as the only Republican to have ever won the national popular vote without winning the state. Dukakis was also the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since Lyndon B. Johnson's landslide victory in 1964.
The state would not vote for the losing candidate again until 2000, the loser of the popular vote until 2016, and the loser of both the popular and electoral vote until 2020. Dukakis remains the last Democratic nominee to win Iowa but lose the popular vote.
Background
The farm crisis of the 1980s under the Reagan administration made the Midwest one of the targets for the Dukakis campaign in 1988, which ultimately proved successful in the region with Democrats performing strongly in many farm states. Nowhere was this more evident than in Iowa, which was the second most Democratic state in the nation in 1988 in terms of both vote percentage and victory margin; it was one of just two states (along with Rhode Island) to vote Democratic by a double-digit margin. This Democratic support was spread widely across the state, with Dukakis winning 75 of the state's 99 counties, whilst counties carried by Bush were concentrated within the state's typically archconservative western fringe. Iowa was also the only state in the nation where Dukakis won by a larger margin than fellow Democrat Bill Clinton would win it by four years later in 1992; Dukakis won 13 Iowa counties which would vote for Bush in 1992.
While Dukakis personally overperformed in Iowa due to the farm crisis, 1988 was also the beginning of a relatively long-term re-alignment of the state toward the Democratic Party, as the historically Republican state became a Democratic leaning swing state for a quarter of a century. Iowa had voted Republican in the five preceding elections, and nine of the previous eleven. From 1988 to 2012, Iowa voted Democratic in six of the seven elections that followed (out of the nine total elections overall), although starting in 2016, the state again became reliably Republican. Despite this, as of the 2024 presidential election, this is the last election in which Marion County, Buena Vista County, Sac County, and Humboldt County voted for a Democratic presidential candidate.
Iowa (with four counties), Texas (with three), and Montana (with one) are the only states containing counties that Dukakis (as of 2024) was the last Democrat to carry.
As of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, this is the last time Iowa voted to the left of many modern-day blue or blue-leaning states, including California, Connecticut, Hawaii, neighboring Illinois, neighboring Minnesota, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Washington state, and Vermont.
Results
Results by county
Counties that flipped from Republican to Democratic
- Adair
- Adams
- Appanoose
- Audubon
- Benton
- Black Hawk
- Buchanan
- Buena Vista
- Calhoun
- Carroll
- Cedar
- Cherokee
- Chickasaw
- Clarke
- Clay
- Clayton
- Clinton
- Crawford
- Decatur
- Delaware
- Emmet
- Fayette
- Floyd
- Franklin
- Guthrie
- Hamilton
- Hancock
- Hardin
- Howard
- Humboldt
- Iowa
- Jackson
- Jasper
- Jones
- Keokuk
- Kossuth
- Linn
- Lousia
- Lucas
- Madison
- Marion
- Marshall
- Mitchell
- Monona
- Muscatine
- Pocahontas
- Poweshiek
- Sac
- Scott
- Story
- Tama
- Taylor
- Union
- Warren
- Washington
- Wayne
- Winneshiek
- Woodbury
- Wright