Was Ross Perot really a big advantage for Clinton in 1992 against Bush Sr., or is it possible that Perot really took a roughly equal chunk of votes away from Clinton and Bush alike, and that Bush would have lost to Clinton in 1992 anyway with or without Perot in the race?
Perot and Clinton were competing for the same centrist voters that wanted change. Clinton would have beaten Bush by double digits easy if Perot had stayed out of the race when he first dropped out.
Nationally, no. Exit polls showed that Perot voters were evenly split between their second choice:
Bush: 38%
Clinton: 38%
Other: 6%
Would not have voted: 14%
Now, were there effects at the state level that would have shifted the calculus a bit? Perhaps, but I haven’t found the original data, so it’s tough to answer.
That;s interesting data, but I also recall that Bill Clinton was in third place, and when Perot exited the race the first time, Clinton vaulted ahead of Bush. The race tightened against when Perot re-entered.
I guess all that really matters is how voters felt on election day, but during the campaign Clinton was the third wheel who you’d be wasting your vote on in the spring, and then went up by like 20 points the day Perot exited.
Thanks for the link. It’s a great article. I was a Perot voter myself and would have voted for Bush if Perot was not in the race. Perot hurt himself by dropping out then coming back in.
It was a close race in 2000 too and there’s the same speculation that Nader took votes away from Gore.
All good reason to consider changing how we elect our President. Unfortunately, our Congress is so dysfunctional, either they would screw it up even worse or they would never get it done. They can’t agree on a reasonable budget much lest election reform.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that Nader took away votes from Gore and cost him the election in 2000 (Gore had his other shortcomings, of course). Nader voters were far, far more likely to have voted for Gore than Bush, had Nader not been in the race. That’s been pretty well documented.
I remember another NYT analysis, maybe from early 1993, finding that the only state in which Perot actually made a difference in the Electoral College in 1992 was Maine. Had it not been for Perot, they projected, Bush would’ve won the state rather than Clinton. Bush would still have lost the election, though.
My favorite story from the Perot campaign: They brought in Ed Rollins as a campaign advisor and showed him a list of people they were considering for Perot’s running mate. Rollins wrote in his memoir that one of the names on the list was Reagan’s first Attorney General, William French Smith. Rollins told them, “Bill’s great, but he’s been dead for a couple of years.” He’d died in 1990, and the Perot high command didn’t know it.
Which matches the Gallup historyon that race:
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Apr - Bush ahead but declining, Clinton and Perot neck and neck.
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May to mid-July - Clinton and Bush remain flat-ish (@25% and 30%), Perot takes off and peaks as the front-runner towards the end of the May, but promptly slips. By mid-July, Bush is again the front-runner (narrowly), but Clinton has closed the gap to both.
DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION HELD - 7/13 to 7/16.
PEROT DROPS OUT - 7/16.
- mid-to-late-July - Clinton and Bush go up roughly proportionally to 40/48 respectively, but Bush has a massive drop to 34 whilst Clinton soars to 56. Clinton will not fall behind again for the rest of the race.
GOP CONVENTION HELD - 8/17-8/20
- Small post-convention bump for Bush, but it doesn’t have legs and he begins a slow decline in polling until late October (FWIW, Clinton also declines slowly during the period, but remains above 50% until October.
PEROT RE-ENTERS THE RACE - 10/1
- Perot who has apparently been reinserted in the poll for several weeks starts off about 14%, but appears to have taken this from both candidates roughly equally based on the September declines for both.
Other than a slight scare for Clinton in late October when the race tightened before spreading out again, that’s the way it went until the election.
If they voted, as opposed to just staying home.
Dislike of Bush was strong enough among liberals in 2000 (although not as white-hot as from 2003 on) that I suspect most would have held their noses and voted for Gore rather than sit on their hands. The polling on that was mixed, though.
Don’t forget that 92 was a high turnout year. I’ve heard some speculation that Perot voters would have been likely non-voters if not for the Perot candidacy. Put simply, he didn’t take votes from anybody, he brought his own.
One friend told me that analysis of drop-off showed that the total difference between total presidential votes and total votes for senate candidates was within a percentage point or two of the Perot vote, but I don’t recall if he was talking nation-wide or just in our state.