Idaho weighed in for this election as 18% more Republican than the national average and with 62.08% of the popular vote. As a result, Idaho became the third-most Republican state in the nation, behind Utah and New Hampshire.[3] Bush won Idaho by a powerful 26.1% margin; his 62.1% vote share made it his third-best state in the nation, after Utah and New Hampshire. The Mountain West as a whole had begun trending Republican from 1952 on, after having been a swing region that was critical to Democratic victories when they did occur between 1896 and 1948.[4] However, the realignment was particularly pronounced in Idaho; in 1964, a mere 16 years after having backed Truman over Dewey, Idaho came within less than 2% of voting for Barry Goldwater, far closer than any other state in the region apart from Goldwater's native Arizona and indeed far closer than any other Johnson state anywhere apart from Florida.
In 1988, an election influenced by the 1980s farm crisis, several Mountain States (most notably Colorado and Montana) were shakier than usual in their support for the Republican ticket, but Idaho remained not only in the Republican column, but far more Republican than the nation overall. Bush dominated almost all of rural Idaho, and also scored strong wins in the population centers of Ada County (Boise), Canyon County (Nampa), Bonneville County (Idaho Falls), and Twin Falls County (Twin Falls), in all of which he exceeded 60% of the vote. He also won, albeit less powerfully, the other two of Idaho's six largest counties, Bannock (Pocatello) and Kootenai (Coeur d'Alene). However, Dukakis did manage to carry a cluster of counties in North Idaho, centered on the Silver Valley, a region historically dominated by mining.
