Dan Quayle, carrying only 10 states and the District of Columbia. Dukakis himself blamed his defeat on the time he spent doing gubernatorial work in Massachusetts during the few weeks following the Democratic Convention. Many believed he should have been campaigning across the country. During this time, his 17-point lead in opinion polls completely disappeared, as his lack of visibility allowed Bush to define the issues of the campaign. Dukakis has since stated that the main reason he lost was his decision "not to respond to the Bush attack campaign, and in retrospect it was a pretty dumb decision." Despite Dukakis's loss, his performance was a marked improvement over the previous two Democratic efforts, both in the popular vote and the Electoral College. Though Bush still won a majority of the popular vote, Dukakis's margin of loss (7.8%) nationally was narrower than Jimmy Carter's in 1980 (9.7%) or Walter Mondale's in 1984 (18.2%), and earned 41.8 million votes nationally. Dukakis made some strong showings in states that had voted for Republicans Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford. He managed to pull off a close win in New York which at the time was the second largest state in terms of electoral votes, he also scored victories in Rhode Island, Hawaii, his home state of Massachusetts, Oregon, and Washington; Walter Mondale had lost all six states, and since then, all six states have remained in the Democratic column for each subsequent presidential election. He swept Iowa, winning by 10 points in a state that had voted Republican in the last five presidential elections. His proportion of the popular vote would not be matched by any subsequent Democratic presidential candidate in South Dakota (46.51%), Kansas (42.56%), Oklahoma (41.28%), Wyoming (38.01%), or Idaho (36.01%). Although Dukakis cut into the Republican hold in the Midwest, he failed to dent the emerging GOP stronghold in the South that had been forming since the end of World War II with a temporary reprieve with Jimmy Carter (along with future President and Southern Democrat Bill Clinton, albeit to a much lesser extent). He lost most of the South by a wide margin, with Bush's popular vote margins exceeding 15% in most states. He carried most of the southern-central parishes of Louisiana, which was also his best Southern popular vote margin. His second-lowest Southern margin was Texas, where four overwhelmingly Mexican-American counties of South Texas delivered more than 81%