Partisanship, Policy and Performance: The Reagan Legacy in the 1988 Election

Various journalistic and academic accounts of the 1988 election suggest that George Bush's victory over Michael Dukakis should be primarily attributed to Bush's advantage in voters' comparative evaluations of the two candidates' personal qualities, or to citizens' demands to hold the line against any tax increase or to white voters' attitudes towards blacks and policies designed to assist blacks. This article, based on the 1988 National Election Study, presents evidence which contradicts all three of these conventional conclusions. Based on a multi-stage explanatory model, the authors emphasize instead the substantial roles in determining individual vote decisions that were played by preferences concerning policy direction, in arenas other than those about taxes or race, and by voters' evaluations of the Reagan administration's performance. The authors also emphasize the difference between distinguishing Bush voters from Dukakis voters and explaining the aggregate outcome of the election. In their analysis, the relatively modest size of George Bush's victory (in comparison with Reagan's margin in 1984) is given added significance by documenting the continuing role played by approval of the Reagan administration's policies, the virtual disappearance between 1984 and 1988 of the Democrats' advantage in party identification among voters and the increase in the preponderance of self-designated conservatives over liberals that took place during the same four-year interval.