Compared to the rest of liberalNew England, New Hampshire historically had a strong fiscal conservative streak to its politics, and Bush's pledge not to raise taxes played well to the state's anti-tax electorate. This election would prove to be the GOP's high point in New Hampshire, as the state gave Bush his second-strongest win in the nation, behind only Utah.[1]
In the following years, the state would drift to the left, though more on social issues than on economic issues. As the Republican Party moved to embrace the Christian right and became increasingly Southern, the GOP would suffer a rapid decline in its fortunes in New Hampshire. Despite the scale of Bush's victory in 1988, no Republican has since won even a majority of the state's votes, although his son George W. Bush would eke out a narrow 48–47 plurality in 2000.
As of the 2024 presidential election[update], this is the last election in which a Republican has been able to win every county within the state as well as the last time the counties of Cheshire, Grafton, Merrimack and Strafford voted for a Republican presidential candidate.[2] This is also the last time that New Hampshire was won by double digits by either party, (although future Democratic candidates in both Bill Clinton, and later Barack Obama came incredibly close to doing so during their landslide victories in 1996, along with 2008).
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