The
1988 United States presidential election was the 51st quadrennial
presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 1988. Democratic Governor of New York,
Mario Cuomo, defeated incumbent
Vice President George H.W. Bush in a narrow race.
Incumbent president Ronald Reagan was ineligible to seek a third term. Bush entered
the Republican primaries as the front-runner, defeating U.S. Senator
Bob Dole and televangelist
Pat Robertson to win the nomination. He selected U.S. Senator
Dan Quayle of Indiana as his running mate. Cuomo won the
Democratic primaries after defeating his main rivals,
Michael Dukakis and Jesse Jackson. He selected U.S. Senator
Sam Nunn of Georgia as his running mate.
Bush ran an aggressive campaign concentrated on the economy, reducing urban crime, and continuing Reagan's policies. He attacked Cuomo as an elitist "
New York liberal," which Cuomo aggressively countered with attacks on the Reagan deficit, the
Iran-Contra scandal, and Bush's lack of concrete domestic policies (a failing Bush himself called "
the vision thing"). Cuomo led by a wide margin in early polls, and although this gap narrowed after the
Republican National Convention, Cuomo continued to lead, especially after strong performances in two presidential debates (compounded by Dan Quayle's
poor performance in the Vice Presidential debate). No Republican candidate has since won
California,
Connecticut,
Maine, or
Vermont. Cuomo narrowly won the popular vote by 2 million, and with narrow victories in
Ohio, Iowa, Georgia, and Delaware, defeated Bush to become the 41st President of the United States.
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Based on a combination of four or five games of President Elect '88 as well as my own predictions. Text partially from Wikipedia.