# The Ross Perot Spoiler Myth **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [July 23, 2015, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989 "2015-07-23T19:36:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![DerekMichaels00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f14d63/32.png) [@DerekMichaels00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DerekMichaels00)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2015, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989/21 "2015-07-25T14:37:46Z")
Also RTFirefly, you can’t move the goalpost like that. The common argument is that “had he not been on the ballot, Bush would’ve gotten most or all of those votes.” When its changed to “he altered the dynamic of that race,” its simply a goalpost move. And both arguments always talk about Bush Sr.'s high “average” term approval, leaving out mean skewness and volatility of approval ratings, and the fact Bush Sr.'s approvals were much lower in the election year than presidents who did win re-election, and the trend was much more downward as time moved towards the election year compared to other presidents, W and Obama included. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2015, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989/22 "2015-07-25T16:17:47Z")
> [@DerekMichaels00](#): > > Also RTFirefly, you can’t move the goalpost like that. The common argument is that “had he not been on the ballot, Bush would’ve gotten most or all of those votes.” When its changed to “he altered the dynamic of that race,” its simply a goalpost move. Where did I previously put the goalposts? ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2015, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989/23 "2015-07-25T16:35:22Z")
What RTFirefly says makes a certain sense from an intuitive standpoint, but the problem is that it’s not quantifiable. It can’t be proven or (and this may be what makes it appealing to Republicans) disproven. Bottom line though, when an incumbent President can’t break 38% in his reelection bid, he’s got no one to blame but _himself._ ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2015, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989/24 "2015-07-25T16:56:14Z")
Well, **Derek** , let’s see where you set the goalposts in your OP: > [@](#): > > Some people out there have posited that Ross Perot, in 1992, affected the outcome of the 1992 election. “affected the outcome of the 1992 election” just covers the _what_; it doesn’t say anything about _how_. If you read my post carefully, you notice I don’t take a stance on whether Perot tipped the election. I’m gonna say _we don’t know_ whether Bush might’ve pulled it out if Perot had not injected himself into the discussion that year. (Nice graphic, but a sample space of four data points isn’t particularly robust.) But saying that IF he could have won under that circumstance, Perot affected the outcome of the election, isn’t moving any sort of goalpost. It’s part of what you proposed that we should debate. > [@E-DUB](#): > > What RTFirefly says makes a certain sense from an intuitive standpoint, but the problem is that it’s not quantifiable. It can’t be proven or (and this may be what makes it appealing to Republicans) disproven. I think that’s claiming overmuch. We in this discussion really don’t _know_ what data is available from 1992. I’d guess you’re probably right, that there just isn’t sufficient polling to prove or disprove this. But again, we in this thread don’t know for sure. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2015, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989/25 "2015-07-25T17:08:40Z")
Maddow’s video was terrific. I’ve really never understood exactly why or when this myth of Ross Perot costing Bush the election came about because it certainly wasn’t widely believed at the time and people paying attention to that election didn’t believe it, and of course during the three months in which Perot had dropped out of the election, Clinton was beating the pants off Bush something like 47-30 in most polls. However, by the 2000s it seemed to have been embraced equally by conservatives who were sore losers and liberals who refused to want to believe that their positions were more popular than they liked to believe and who were complete pessimists. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2015, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989/26 "2015-07-25T17:12:30Z")
I’ll toss in something I will confess upfront that I know nothing about, but WTF: Yesterday, in discussing the possibility of a Trump independent candidacy, [Ed Kilgore mentioned](http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_07/more_on_a_trump_indie_bid056743.php) “V.O. Key’s great insight that third-party voters are usually in transit from one major party to another.” Key was an influential political scientist in the 1940s and 1950s. I haven’t been able to locate any other references to this insight of Key’s. It’s relevant to the extent that it’s true, but I have no idea of the extent to which it is true. But if it’s something that the political scientists take seriously, they’ve probably tried to measure the degree to which the Perot campaigns support the validity of this idea. That ain’t my bailiwick, but maybe we’ve got people here who know this sorta stuff. ---
**Author:** ![DerekMichaels00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f14d63/32.png) [@DerekMichaels00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DerekMichaels00)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2015, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989/27 "2015-07-25T17:33:53Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > Well, **Derek** , let’s see where you set the goalposts in your OP: > > “affected the outcome of the 1992 election” just covers the _what_; it doesn’t say anything about _how_. > > If you read my post carefully, you notice I don’t take a stance on whether Perot tipped the election. I’m gonna say _we don’t know_ whether Bush might’ve pulled it out if Perot had not injected himself into the discussion that year. (Nice graphic, but a sample space of four data points isn’t particularly robust.) But saying that IF he could have won under that circumstance, Perot affected the outcome of the election, isn’t moving any sort of goalpost. It’s part of what you proposed that we should debate. > > I think that’s claiming overmuch. We in this discussion really don’t _know_ what data is available from 1992. I’d guess you’re probably right, that there just isn’t sufficient polling to prove or disprove this. But again, we in this thread don’t know for sure. Lets go with your premise: you’re saying it wasn’t the “spoiler effect” but rather it was an exogenous shock to Bush Sr.'s campaign, maybe like the Iranian hostage crisis to Jimmy Carter’s prospects. That not only veers into a metaphysical type analysis, but is a gross mischaracterization of the events. Perot was not a cause of Bush’s problems, but rather a symptom, as was the hostage crisis with Carter. Completely absent both events, the two Presidents had very bad approval rating trends, with Bush’s continuing a very steep and constant decline that was occurring long before Perot entered in March 1992. Carter’s numbers were also very low before the Shah was overthrown. Both situations were due to economic problems and both had primary challengers as incumbent presidents, Carter with Kennedy, Bush with Buchanan. Such situations are very different than incumbents who were re-elected, and don’t owe to Perot, or for that matter, Anderson. ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2015, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989/28 "2015-07-25T20:24:10Z")
Essentially, the argument is that once people had decided to vote for one “not-Bush”, it made voting for the other “not-Bush” easier. Maybe, but it does need to be mentioned that the Clinton campaign was one well-oiled machine that made virtually NO mistakes. From his convention speech to the selection of Al Gore as VP to the bus tours. Also unique, at least up till then, was the rapid-response to charges made against him. Not only were they so quick in responding that the charge and the rebuttal would be reported during the same news cycle, but they’d often find a way to turn around attacks against Clinton. LBJ used to tell a joke about a group of campaign managers who were trying to smear an opponent by implying that he had sex with farm animals. The punchline was “At least we can make the SOB deny it.” If that had been tried on Clinton, his response would have been: “They want you to believe that I screw pigs, well, their policies have screwed the pig farmers of America”. Whether or not Perot helped or hurt Clinton in the election, it is undeniable that by denying Clinton a popular vote majority he definitely hurt Clinton’s Presidency. ---
**Author:** ![DerekMichaels00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f14d63/32.png) [@DerekMichaels00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DerekMichaels00)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2015, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989/29 "2015-07-25T21:18:17Z")
> [@E-DUB](#): > > Essentially, the argument is that once people had decided to vote for one “not-Bush”, it made voting for the other “not-Bush” easier. Maybe, but it does need to be mentioned that the Clinton campaign was one well-oiled machine that made virtually NO mistakes. From his convention speech to the selection of Al Gore as VP to the bus tours. Also unique, at least up till then, was the rapid-response to charges made against him. Not only were they so quick in responding that the charge and the rebuttal would be reported during the same news cycle, but they’d often find a way to turn around attacks against Clinton. > > LBJ used to tell a joke about a group of campaign managers who were trying to smear an opponent by implying that he had sex with farm animals. The punchline was “At least we can make the SOB deny it.” > > If that had been tried on Clinton, his response would have been: “They want you to believe that I screw pigs, well, their policies have screwed the pig farmers of America”. > > Whether or not Perot helped or hurt Clinton in the election, it is undeniable that by denying Clinton a popular vote majority he definitely hurt Clinton’s Presidency. And Clinton didn’t make any “I lusted in my heart” mistakes either. Another weakness of the premise that if Perot didn’t spoil but “mortally weakened” Bush is that it is usually used in conjunction with “Clinton’s baggage got less attention,” which is utterly ridiculous, because it got a TON of attention. There is no serious reason Perot made Bush’s chance of re-election any worse than it already was. Its just an adaptation of the Anderson spoiler idea, but its caught more traction because Clinton got limited to a relative majority (another name for plurality) rather than an absolute majority. What if the 1980 election had been Reagan 49.8%, Carter still 41% and Anderson 7.6? Or Reagan 48.8 Carter 41% and Anderson 8.6%? "If you add all the votes to the guy who got 'spoiled…"uhhh NO elections and politics don’t work like that! What ever happened to logic? But also, what would GOP excuses be then? They’re very lucky it didn’t turn out like that. > [@](#): > > it is undeniable that by denying Clinton a popular vote majority he definitely hurt Clinton’s Presidency. It also hurt Hillary Clinton in 2008 in the primaries: a lot of Obama supporters, and Sanders guys today, use the Perot myth. But its one thing for political opponents to do that; its not at all ok for the media to do it. That’s why this myth needs to end. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2015, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989/30 "2015-07-26T10:15:56Z")
> [@DerekMichaels00](#): > > And Clinton didn’t make any “I lusted in my heart” mistakes either. I’m sorry, I’m laughing so hard at this, I can’t seem to read any further. I’ll try again later. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2015, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989/31 "2015-07-26T14:40:18Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > I’ve never seen any sort of analysis of that. I’m sure someone’s done some work on that, because a lot of political scientists are really smart people. Yes, but are they sabermetricians? For that matter, is **DerekMichaels00** one? Because I only trust OCD baseball superfans for my statistics. 😉 I don’t recall “I lusted in my heart” as being any great mistake out here in flyover country, where folks understand and speak the language of sin and redemption. In context one could see it was spoken humbly and with sincere regret. It was his saying it in Playboy that was a bit of a problem, but witnessing to sinners was big in 1976, when asking strangers if they had been saved was transitioning into, “Have you been born again?” Maybe Johnny Carson got some mileage out of it in NYC and LA, but I think a lot of people saw themselves in Brother Jimmy’s story. ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2015, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989/32 "2015-07-26T14:40:40Z")
The idea that Ross Perot affected (negatively for Bush) the 92 election was present since before the ballots were cast. It is in no way retroactively writing history. I remember the election well. I think Clinton would’ve won anyway, but as RTFirefly said, no Perot from the get-go would’ve meant a different election and it would’ve definitely increase the, slim, chance of Bush winning. ---
**Author:** ![DerekMichaels00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f14d63/32.png) [@DerekMichaels00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DerekMichaels00)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2015, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989/33 "2015-07-26T15:36:19Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > I’m sorry, I’m laughing so hard at this, I can’t seem to read any further. I’ll try again later. 🙂 what I was referring to was a self-inflicted electoral wound which [eroded a lot of his lead](http://www.gallup.com/poll/110548/gallup-presidential-election-trialheat-trends-19362004.aspx) and nearly cost him the election (he went from stat significant lead to MoE and won with a margin in the popular vote nearly as small as GW Bush in 2004). Clinton never knowingly did anything to erode his lead in 1992: his lead against Bush Sr. only eroded when Perot came back. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2015, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989/34 "2015-07-26T16:50:43Z")
> [@DerekMichaels00](#): > > You know, every so often, particularly during election cycles, the talk about third party candidates come out. Donald Trump is the most recent example. Some people out there have posited that Ross Perot, in 1992, affected the outcome of the 1992 election. The WSJ and today the NYT parroted it like its absolute truth. This seems to fly in the face of commonly available data and it amazes me how that happens, such willful ignorance or mendacity. The data against the idea that Perot “elected” Clinton is enumerated here. > > 1. The fundamentals of the election were not very good for Bush. George H.W. Bush’s approval ratings in 1992 [rivaled](http://www.gallup.com/poll/116677/presidential-approval-ratings-gallup-historical-statistics-trends.aspx) Jimmy Carter’s in 1980. Both in their election years were not only much lower than Reagan in 1984 and Clinton in 1996, but lower than Bush 2004 and Obama 2012, both of those being tossup. I crunched the numbers in excel using the approval numbers from UCSB. I took the average 6-month pre-election day approvals of the election year for Ford thru Obama to see its effect on incumbent party retaining the White House. > > Close incumbent elections with margins of victory closer than 4 points (often MoE in national polls) > i. 1976: Gerald Ford’s 6-month pre-election approval was 46% > ii. 2004: George W. Bush’s 6-month pre-election approval was 48.75% > iii. 2012: Barack Obama’s 6-month pre-election approval was 47.23% > > Decisive incumbent Party Re-elections (re-elections with margin of victory 4 points or more > i. 1984: Ronald Reagan’s 6 month pre-election approval was 53.35% > ii. 1996: Bill Clinton’s 6 month pre-election approval was 55.08% > > _Incumbent President defeats > i. 1980: Jimmy Carter’s 6 month pre-election approval: 34.14% > ii. 1992: George H.W. Bush’s 6 month pre-election approval: 35.68%_ > > Incumbent party w/o incumbent on ballot > i. 1988: Reagan’s is 51%, party retains White House > ii. 2000: Clinton’s is 58.42%, Gore wins popular vote, loses election (1 in 13 historical chance) > iii. 2008: Bush II’s is 28.92%, party loses White House > > You might point out that popular votes don’t directly decide the election, but there is a very VERY strong correlation between popular vote winners and electoral vote winners. Over 93% of the time, the popular vote winner (plurality or majority) wins the election. George W. Bush is the only one in anyone here’s lifetime to do the opposite, and will likely continue to be. But I will mention the electoral college calculus. > > 1. On the electoral college map, Bush Sr. would have needed to win nearly every state he lost by less than 5% to win 270 (in which case the map looks like [this](http://uselectionatlas.org/TOOLS/genusmap.php?year=1992&ev_c=1&pv_p=0&ev_p=1&AL=1%3b9%3b4&AK=1%3b3%3b3&AZ=1%3b8%3b3&AR=2%3b6%3b5&CA=2%3b54%3b4&CO=1%3b8%3b4&CT=2%3b8%3b4&DE=2%3b3%3b4&DC=2%3b3%3b8&FL=1%3b25%3b4&GA=1%3b13%3b4&HI=2%3b4%3b4&ID=1%3b4%3b4&IL=2%3b22%3b4&IN=1%3b12%3b4&IA=2%3b7%3b4&KS=1%3b6%3b3&KY=1%3b8%3b4&LA=1%3b9%3b4&MD=2%3b10%3b4&MA=2%3b12%3b4&MI=2%3b18%3b4&MN=2%3b10%3b4&MS=1%3b7%3b4&MO=2%3b11%3b4&MT=1%3b3%3b3&NV=1%3b4%3b3&NH=1%3b4%3b3&NJ=1%3b15%3b4&NM=2%3b5%3b4&NY=2%3b33%3b4&NC=1%3b14%3b4&ND=1%3b3%3b4&OH=1%3b21%3b4&OK=1%3b8%3b4&OR=2%3b7%3b4&PA=2%3b23%3b4&RI=2%3b4%3b4&SC=1%3b8%3b4&SD=1%3b3%3b4&TN=1%3b11%3b4&TX=1%3b32%3b4&UT=1%3b5%3b4&VT=2%3b3%3b4&VA=1%3b13%3b4&WA=2%3b11%3b4&WV=2%3b5%3b4&WI=1%3b11%3b4&WY=1%3b3%3b3&ME=2%3b2%3b3&ME1=2%3b1%3b3&ME2=2%3b1%3b3&NE=1%3b2%3b4&NE1=1%3b1%3b4&NE2=1%3b1%3b4&NE3=1%3b1%3b4). Bush Sr’s election year approvals did not lend themselves to that. Change WI (a Dukakis '88 state) on that map, or NJ (Dem since '92), Clinton STILL wins. Also, 1992 was clearly the start of a 2 decade trend in which NJ, CT, ME, NH, MI, CA, DE, MD, VT, PA, and IL vote exclusively Dem (except NH '00), even tho before Clinton, they were very Republican on the national level from 1968 to 1988. Most of them went 6 for 6 GOP in that period. > > 2. The actual question was asked to voters about their vote sans Perot. The exit polls from election night 1992, a lot more empirical than some pundit, [show](https://farm1.staticflickr.com/421/19812684321_3d322df8ef_o.png) that Clinton would have won an absolute majority of the vote absent Perot, and thus in more than 12 in 13 trials, the election. > > 3. Ross Perot was [left-of-center](http://www.ontheissues.org/Ross_Perot.htm), not at all like Nader was a liberal or Trump is running as a conservative. Perot was pro-choice, pro-gay rights. He was also [against “trickle-down economics.”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQvZ-Hgd8Us) > > 4. The Republicans and the far-left also leave out that when Perot was not in the race, which was from July to the start of October 1992, Bush still polled near the 37% that approved of his performance and that he won in the end. Nate Silver, a data and stats expert, also disagrees with the idea that Perot cost Bush tho he does believe Perot [hurt Clinton](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-bad-economy-could-harm-house-republicans/). > > Whatever political party you are part of or ideological stripe you believe in, data ought to mean more than what fits a narrative. This myth has gone on for too long. The extremists of both parties do have use for it. The GOP likes to use it to save face for permanently losing what amounts to 156 EVs today (NJ, PA, VT, NH, ME, CA, IL, MI, DE, MD, CT), EVs that would put Romney in the White House. Losing in general is not something they handle well. Liberals also use the myth to try to nominate and push far-left ideas. I think facts and figures beat out agendas any day. Read my lips; no new factes. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2015, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989/35 "2015-07-26T17:05:35Z")
Bush had, over his term, an average of an over 60% approval rating. In March 91 he was at 89%! A year before the election he was still running over 50%… He was popular enough that many of the bigger names on the Democratic side decided not to run. He was still at 46% in January 92. Of course the deepening recession is what sunk him most of all, but there were other factors. Remember that he first ran on “Read my lips: no new taxes!” but in office dealing with a ballooning deficit from the Reagan years and Congressional realities ended up raising them. That lost him lots of his GOP base love (along the love of the “Reagan Democrats”, White working class voters who had fairly recently moved into the GOP column) and trying to tack right to fight off Buchanan in the primary was not enough to earn back their trust but did lose him some of the middle. **RTF** ’s speculations are I think most cogent. Election eve approval ratings were the _end result_ of the complete election season, a dramatic drop from pre-season numbers. The meaningful question is if Perot’s presence changed the dynamic of the election and if so, in what ways? By May Bush had the GOP nomination in the bag. The usual course would have been the party spending the rest of the season rallying around their candidate, tacking back to the middle, and having surrogates go negative on the other side’s candidate apparent. But then you had Perot getting sizable write-in votes in the [Washington and Oregon primaries](http://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/21/us/the-1992-campaign-primaries-perot-s-strength-shown-in-oregon.html?pagewanted=1) on both sides. Moreover in exit polling > [@](#): > > Perhaps the most surprising finding of the survey of voters leaving the polls in Oregon, even more than the large number of write-in votes for Mr. Perot, was that more Democratic primary voters said they thought well of the Texan (57 percent) than of Mr. Clinton (49 percent). Among Republican primary voters, the same number (59 percent) expressed favorable views of Mr. Perot as did so about President Bush. > > The voter survey also included hypothetical three-way races. Among Democratic primary voters, Mr. Perot did at least as well as Mr. Clinton, pulling 45 percent to 42 percent for Mr. Clinton, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. Among Republicans, Mr. Bush pulled 51 percent to 40 percent for Mr. Perot. > > Among Oregon voters who turned out for the primary, in other words, Mr. Perot has greatly weakened partisan ties without announcing his candidacy. How were the respective campaigns impacted by that? Clinton’s tact was to spin it with an embrace of the spirit that we need change and echoing Perot’s criticisms of the Bush administration. Bush could not do that. The ability to control the end of the primary season conversation into the coalescence of the GOP around him, prepping for the move to the middle was kneecapped. Instead he had Perot snapping at him. His surrogates spent at least as much effort attacking Perot as Clinton. In June [national polling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_polling_for_U.S._Presidential_elections#United_States_presidential_election.2C_1992) was running Perot 39%; Bush 31%; Clinton 25%. At the end of the month Perot did his drop-out; by the end of July Clinton, without Perot running, was ahead 57 to 32%. From January to the end of July Bush’s approval dropped from 46 to 29%. Yes Perot’s coming back in prevented the election from being the Clinton blow-out it otherwise would have been. But his being in the mix in the first half of the year had created a much greater throw the bum out dynamic than Clinton alone could ever have achieved without him. Would Bush have been able to hang onto a 46% approval if Perot had never been in the mix? Would slightly under 50% approval have been enough? (It was for Obama.) Would Clinton’s “It’s the economy stupid.” had been as effective without Perot having hammered as hard? Could Bush’s team have gotten the national conversation to take a different course without Perot in it? Like most alt-history speculations, we’ll never know, but those are what matters to answering if “Ross Perot, in 1992, affected the outcome of the 1992 election”? ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2015, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989/36 "2015-07-26T18:32:39Z")
An intensive _NYT_ review of the 1992 election results not long afterwards found that the only Electoral College difference Perot made was costing GHWB the state of Maine. But even with Maine’s votes, Bush would still have lost to Clinton. ---
**Author:** ![DerekMichaels00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f14d63/32.png) [@DerekMichaels00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DerekMichaels00)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2015, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989/37 "2015-07-26T19:49:45Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Bush had, over his term, an average of an over 60% approval rating. In March 91 he was at 89%! A year before the election he was still running over 50%.. He was popular enough that many of the bigger names on the Democratic side decided not to run. He was still at 46% in January 92… > > The meaningful question is if Perot’s presence changed the dynamic of the election and if so, in what ways? > > Clinton’s tact was to spin it with an embrace of the spirit that we need change and echoing Perot’s criticisms of the Bush administration. Bush could not do that. The ability to control the end of the primary season conversation into the coalescence of the GOP around him, prepping for the move to the middle was kneecapped. Instead he had Perot snapping at him. His surrogates spent at least as much effort attacking Perot as Clinton. > > Would Bush have been able to hang onto a 46% approval if Perot had never been in the mix? Would slightly under 50% approval have been enough? (It was for Obama.) Would Clinton’s “It’s the economy stupid.” had been as effective without Perot having hammered as hard? Could Bush’s team have gotten the national conversation to take a different course without Perot in it? Perot did not enter until very late February 20, and the numbers were still trending down!! They were at 38% on the [day Perot](http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/popularity.php?pres=41&sort=time&direct=DESC&Submit=DISPLAY) got on Larry King. George W. Bush never went under 46% approvals [during 2004](http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/popularity.php?pres=43&sort=time&direct=DESC&Submit=DISPLAY). It is true that his average/mean approval was high in 1991, but you seem to miss that the _rate or change, or trend_, in his approvals went down very fast, hence the steepness of the line, Pre-Perot. That’s very indicative of a weak incumbent. You can plot Bush and his son, also add Obama and Carter on another Gallup approval center site and see that clearly, Bush Sr.'s approvals were not only inflated from Desert Storm, but that his son clearly sought to avoid his dad’s fate and was able to avoid such steep downturns. Bush I’s downturn was continuing even before Perot was in the race and as I’ve shown you, were under 40% before. Obama’s did [not go under 40%](http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/popularity.php?pres=44&sort=time&direct=DESC&Submit=DISPLAY) during the 2012 race. Nobody actually expected Buchanan to win the GOP primaries; it was like Kennedy and Jimmy Carter twelve years before. And Clinton was already being attacked by his primary opponents and stories abound in the press. You act like Bush woulda shined some kind of light on Clinton that wasn’t being shined. Also, a third party candidate is not a cause of a decline in approvals; its a symptom. If Bush had been a shrewder guy like Obama or W., he’d have stemmed the steep downward line at some point. Also, if Perot did not “siphon”, even if his presence in itself affected the outcome, that’s still not being this “spoiler” people first try to make him into before that’s debunked and the goalpost about his effect is moved. That line of thinking then begs the question “What if Bush had invaded Iraq in 1991 and was a wartime President like W.?” Or “what if he hadn’t raised taxes?” ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2015, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989/38 "2015-07-26T20:11:06Z")
Well, one effect Perot’s presence had was that Bush couldn’t go negative. In a three-way race, two candidates disemboweling each other boosts the third guy. Or any race with more than two people. Just ask Dick Gephardt and Howard Dean, who got into a nasty fight over Medicare in 2004 and went from 1-2 to 3-4 in Iowa. ---
**Author:** ![DerekMichaels00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f14d63/32.png) [@DerekMichaels00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DerekMichaels00)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2015, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989/39 "2015-07-26T20:31:26Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Well, one effect Perot’s presence had was that Bush couldn’t go negative. In a three-way race, two candidates disemboweling each other boosts the third guy. Or any race with more than two people. Just ask Dick Gephardt and Howard Dean, who got into a nasty fight over Medicare in 2004 and went from 1-2 to 3-4 in Iowa. again, you’re positing that “because of Perot, no one was attacking Clinton” which is simply not the truth. Before and during the first part of Perot (before he dropped out), Clinton was already being attacked, as Paula Jones was all out there as were questions about the Rose Law Firm (which Jerry Brown attacked Bill on) that ultimately morphed into Whitewater. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2015, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989/40 "2015-07-26T21:09:33Z")
> [@DerekMichaels00](#): > > again, you’re positing that “because of Perot, no one was attacking Clinton” which is simply not the truth. Before and during the first part of Perot (before he dropped out), Clinton was already being attacked, as Paula Jones was all out there as were questions about the Rose Law Firm (which Jerry Brown attacked Bill on) that ultimately morphed into Whitewater. Not to mention the Bush campaign going through his passport records and ranting about him participating in anti-War protests at Oxford. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ross-perot-spoiler-myth/725989.md?page=3)