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1988 United States presidential election in North Dakota

The 1988 United States presidential election in North Dakota took place on November 8, 1988. All 50 states and the District of Columbia were part of the 1988 United States presidential election. State voters chose three electors to the Electoral College, which selected the president and vice president.

North Dakota was won by incumbent United States Vice President George H. W. Bush of Texas, who was running against Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. Bush ran with Indiana Senator Dan Quayle as Vice President, and Dukakis ran with Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen. Bush won the election in North Dakota with a solid 13-point landslide.

The election was very partisan, with nearly 99 percent of the electorate voting for either the Democratic or Republican parties. All major counties in North Dakota gave pluralities for Bush, including the relatively highly populated center of Cass County, which contains the city of Fargo. As has been typical ever since the 1960s, however, Dukakis gained large majorities in the two predominantly Native American counties of Rolette in the north and Sioux in the south, and he also carried by smaller margins a number of other counties in the northern and eastern portions of the state. This is one of only two elections (the other being 2020) since 1952 where national bellwether Sargent County in the state's southeast supported a losing candidate, with the anomaly most likely due to the farm crisis.

North Dakota weighed in for this election as five percent more Republican than the national average, a much smaller margin than usual due to the persistent farm crisis of the 1980s. As of the 2020 presidential election this remains the least Republican the state has been relative to the nation since Nixon's landslide win in 1972, when a "favorite son" effect with George McGovern from neighboring South Dakota was a likely influence.

Primaries

North Dakota held the last primary of the election season on June 14, by which time the party nominations had effectively already been secured. Libertarian candidate Ron Paul entered due to it being an open primary, receiving 985 votes. For the Republicans, Bush received 37,062 votes to 2,372 for perennial candidate Mary Jane Rachner of Minnesota while Dukakis garnered 2,890 votes compared to 515 for Jesse Jackson.