1988 United States presidential election in Nevada

The presidential election of 1988 was a rather multi-partisan election for Nevada, with more than 3% of the state voting for third parties or for Nevada's "None of These Candidates" option.[2]

This would be the last election in which a Republican presidential nominee would win heavily populated Clark County, home to the city of Las Vegas, which beginning in 1992 would become a reliably Democratic stronghold in the state. Consequently, 1988 was also the last occasion in which a Republican presidential candidate swept every county in Nevada, and the last time a Republican carried the state by a double-digit margin.

Bush carried Nevada by a landslide margin of 21%, making the state 13.2% more Republican than the nation overall. He carried every county in the state, and both of Nevada's largest counties--Clark and Washoe--weighed in as more Republican than the nation. Only in one county, then-traditionally Democratic White Pine County, did Bush underperform his national vote share, and then only slightly. This was also the only county in which Dukakis cracked 40%, although in no county did he overperform his national vote share (with 'no candidate' garnering 4.9% of the vote in White Pine County).

The Mountain West had begun trending Republican in 1952;[3] in that election, Eisenhower overperformed in Nevada as he did in the rest of the region, after it had unanimously voted for Truman in 1948. However, Nevada, along with New Mexico in the Mountain West, voted for Kennedy in 1960, and was competitive in 1976. 1980 marked a watershed in Nevada's Republican turn, as it voted 25.9% more Republican than the nation, the most to the right Nevada had voted since statehood. Nevada remained a strong 15.7% more Republican than the nation amid Reagan's national 1984 landslide, and remained more Republican than the nation by double digits in 1988. This was at the same time as some other Mountain West states, such as Colorado and Montana, wavered in the strength of their traditional Republicanism, amid the 1980s farm crisis.

Nevada, which had been a bellwether state for most of the 20th century (having voted for the winner of every election between its third vote for Bryan in 1908 and its vote for Ford in 1976), returned to being closer to the national median in 1992, as Bill Clinton, the national winner, narrowly carried it. It remained narrowly to the right of the country in both of Clinton's wins, but George W. Bush only narrowly carried it in his own two victories in 2000 and 2004, as 1988 remained (as of 2020) not only the last election in which Clark County voted to the right of the country, but also the last election in which Clark County has even voted Republican.

• Presidency of George H. W. Bush