Was Clinton only elected because of Perot?

[ButterflyBlood]

I get annoyed whenever I see this right wing fallacy here, although it isn't that often. But simply adding the Perot total to Bush I's would've given Clinton only Arkansas and narrow pluralities in New York and Maryland. To think that someone unpopular at that point would've won a bigger landslide victory than he did in 1988 is totally ludicrous. Anyway there are plenty of analysis showing that many of the Perot voters wouldn't have voted, and many would've voted for Clinton, but while there's no way to know for sure, most evidence points to no.

[jenk]

1. before perot re-entered the race

Clinton led in the polls 53-47, and the lead held steady and he won by a similar margin.

Perot voters were both dems and repugs, he split the vote. All the old polls say so, and even if the perot vote was 60-40 bush, it wasn't enough to get him the win in key states and close the gap.

[Terwilliger]

2. Don't worry...Clinton won on merit alone

The "Perot factor" had absolutely NO impact on the outcome </DU party line>

[vi5]

3. Correct me if I'm wrong but Labor is typically democrat leaning, no?

And Perot's big issue was opposing NAFTA, which I'm pretty sure American labor was by and large against.

So wouldn't it stand to reason that if anything Perot would have siphoned votes from Clinton, just as much if not more than from Bush?

I remember Perot running a more populist type of campaign which it would seem would hurt Democrats more than Republicans.

[JackRiddler]

24. talking about 1992 here, not 1996

Nafta wasn't until 1996.

Perot took 18 percent in '92. Turnout was up by about 5 or 6 percent compared to 88.

Without Perot, no doubt Clinton would have won. Perot vote was largely off Clinton; before he reentered, he had even endorsed Clinton.

[boxster]

4. Clinton was elected in spite of Perot, not because of.

[NWHarkness]

5. Every exit poll said NO

If Perot had not been in the race, all the evidence shows that his supporters would have split pretty much right down the middle, giving Clinton a comfortable winning margin.

It is a mistake to think of the Perot voters as right wingers, it was a much more complex phenomenon than that.

[TahitiNut]

11. Exit polls don't count the ones who stayed home.

Besides other inaccuracies, they fail to assess the combinatorial GOTV impact or the campaign finance impact. They can't "unring the bell."

[0007]

19. That's true!

Perot may have hurt Bush One, but it didn't help Clinton.

[Bush loves Jiang]

6. No...

I believe most voters who abandonned Perot in '96 went to Clinton rather than to Dole.

[caledesi]

7. When I hear this RW fallacy, I always ask "Then why did he get

re-elected?" Explain please.

[Terwilliger]

8. you actually think that's connected?

I mean, Bush wasn't elected, but if he'd run the country better in the last few years, he could win re-election in a landlside. 92 and 96 are not causal.

[Jack Rabbit]

9. What I haers shortly after the election

What I haers shortly after the election is that exit polls showed that of those Perot voters who would have voted had Perot not been on the ballot would have split almost evenly between the two candidates.

The charge that Perot handed the election to Clinton has even less validity than the one that says Nader handed the election to Bush.

[TahitiNut]

10. If cows could fly ...

... I'd be in the steel umbrella business. (But who'd buy them? What would cows eat if they flew? How many others would be in that business?)

Unless and until someone can make a case for the Perot "What if?" (or the Nader "What if?") that includes a comrehensive fact-based assessment of all of the following factors, then opinions are impotent (i.e. they don't impregnate the egg of understanding to yield a viable fetus of comprehension.)

A - How many Clinton voters would've stayed home if Perot didn't run?
B - How many Bush/Dole voters would've stayed home if Perot didn't run?
C - How many Clinton voters would've voted for Bush/Dole if Perot didn't run?
D - How many Bush/Dole voters would've voted for Clinton if Perot didn't run?
E - How many Perot voters would've voted for Bush/Dole if Perot didn't run?
F - How many Perot voters would've voted for Clinton if Perot didn't run?
G - How many Perot voters would've stayed home if Perot didn't run?
H - What effect did Perot's candidacy have on campaign contributions to Clinton and Bush/Dole?
I - What effect did Perot's candidacy have on media coverage and issue relevancy?

- Then add Buchanan into the mix
- Repeat for every state to assess the impact on the Electoral Vote.

Would anyone like to buy a steel umbrella? :silly:

[Wapsie B]

12. True story.

I remember a patient in the hospital waking in the middle of the night, unable to get back to sleep. He kept going on an on about how if Perot wasn't in the Race Poppy would've won. Of all the things to have on one's mind in the middle of the night and this republican dupe was agonizing over this.

[Yupster]

13. Clinton still wins, but

it would have been closer.

I'd bet a little bit that Perot cost Bush Colorado, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, and Montana.

There's an outside shot Perot cost Bush Kentucky and Ohio, but probably not.

I can't see any states Perot cost Clinton, so my conclusion...

Clinton still wins, but just a little closer.

[ButterflyBlood]

15. Florida and Arizona

a lot of analyses show Clinton could've won Florida and Arizona without Perot.

there is no way Perot cost Bush I New Mexico. Clinton got almost 46% there. Bush would've needed to have gotten over 75% of the Perot voters.

[swinney]

14. Perot Vote via Exit polls--1/2 to Bush and 1/2 to Clinton.

Clinton would have gotten 52%.

[Yupster]

17. I see this printed over and over again,

yet I have never seen a poll showing that Perot drew from Clinton and Bush equally. It sounds like you have one, so please provide a link. I've searched many times and all I ever get is coumnists saying this poll exists, yet I've never been abble to locate it.

Here's a poll I did find though.

The 1996 VNS exit poll asked the voters who they voted for in 1992. Then it asked the voters who voted for Perot in 1992 who they voted for in 1996.

Here's the results.

Of the people who said they voted for Perot in 1992

22 % of them said they voted for Clinton in 1996
33 % said they voted for Perot again in 1996
44 % said they voted for Dole in 1996

That seems to me that more Perot votes came from Bush than Clinton.

It would seem odd that these voters would have voted for Clinton in 1992, but then after a very successful first term, they would turn to a weak Dole instead of Clinton for reelection. That seems a little hard for me to believe.

Still it really doesn't matter in my opinion, because I don't think there were enough votes to make up the 5 % gap. I think it would have given Bush a handful of smaller electoral vote states.

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/elections/natl.exit.poll/index1.html

[Jack Rabbit]

21. A response for you

This analysis is from the Center for Voting and Democracy. In this analysis we see in black and white:

Political scientists and practioners have vigorously debated the role of Ross Perot in Clinton’s victory. Exit polls showed that Perot’s voters apparently split their preferences between Clinton and Bush nearly equally, although approximately a third of them likely would not have voted without him on the ballot.

Okay, that's what I had heard before (see my post no. 9 above).

The analysis on this website goes on to attempt to make a case that Perot's candidacy might have tilted the election toward Clinton. However, this is based on states carried by Clinton in 1992 that went Republican in 1988 and 1996. This seems highly speculative.

[Yupster]

25. I pretty much agree with that analysis, but

again it says exit polls say without saying which one or ones.


I've been looking for this exit poll for a couple of years now. It's talked about everywhere, but never shown.

[slappypan]

16. Bush I was very unpopular

Unemployment was very high at that point in Bush Senior's term, there was an immense amount of anger at him, probably more from the right than the left. I don't think he was gonna be re-elected, with or w/out Perot.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

18. was bush selected only because of Nader?

[Yupster]

20. That's an easier one

I don't think that there's any doubt that without Nader in the race, Gore wins.

[UTUSN]

22. Who Cares, but THANK ZEUS! n/t

[auburnblu]

23. Definitely not in 1996

Clinton had a few more votes than Dole and Perot combined then.

And in 1992, Clinton beat Bush by a decent margin. I think even if Bush got 60% of the 92 Perot votes, Clinton would have won. The "Read My Lips" quote did him in.

[DoNotRefill]

26. It was more than just Perot....

Perot being in the race didn't help, but it wouldn't have hurt Bush if it weren't for Bush's actions regarding gun owners, and his 1989 EO banning the importation of certain guns.

This led to mass anger among people who should have been firmly in the Bush camp, and they either voted for Perot or didn't vote at all. In 1988, the pro-gunners were firmly in the Bush camp. In 1992, the general consensus that I saw among gun owners was that they wouldn't piss on Bush if his hair was on fire. In '88, if you went to a gun show, odds were excellent that there'd be a pro-Bush table there, and the parking lots would be filled with cars toting Bush bumperstickers. In 1992, the ONLY Bush bumper stickers I saw were left over from 1988, and lots of cars had the stickers from '88 removed. I didn't see a single pro-Bush table during the '92 cycle. At the time, there were around 70-80 MILLION gun owners, many of them single-issue voters. Perot got their votes as a way of voicing their displeasure at the "who ELSE ya gonna vote for?" attitude put forth by the Repukes. In other words, they voted for Perot not because they liked him, but because they hated Bush.

You piss off the grassroots at your own peril. This is something we should remember while slamming Dean.

[marie123]

27. yes he was!

In 1992 Clinton got elected with 43.3% of the vote.

Not only is this true, but it was used against clinton by the republicans in his first term. I remember, i was there.