So were Democrats surprised with Clinton's 92 victory?

[ALago1]

I guess I'm asking moreso were Democrats surprised not by the fact that he actually won, but by the margin he won by. I was only 10 at the time so don't really remember much

Does anybody remember what the polls were and what the general pundit consensus was? The reason I ask is that I see many parallels between the two elections (from what I've learned years later) which have been solidified by the NYTimes article citing huge new voter registration.

Just curious. Thanks!

[demnan]

1. Well the Bushies were shocked by it!

But I think that most of us (and I worked on the campaign) felt pretty optimistic. Again the debates were the place where Clinton really developed momentum.

[yellowcanine]

2. Clinton led the whole way after Perot withdrew (for the moment). The race

tightened up some at the end but there was really no surprise except in the size of the electoral vote victory and the size of the percent that Perot finally got.

[2Design]

3. i voted for perot - in looking back I would vote for clinton - I never

would have voted for bush

[KharmaTrain]

4. Touch & Go

When Perot got back in the race, I knew Clinton's chances looked good...especially when Clinton got a nice post convention bounce. Meanwhile Poppy was fumbling all over the place...like he wanted to lose (sorry, no conspiracy explanation here). Also, when Walsh indicted Weinberger and several others in Iran/Contra just before the election, I felt like Clinton stood a chance.

The polls showed Clinton leading in the final month, but in a similar fashion as of today. The difference is Perot. Who knows how many votes he took away from Poppy, or how a credible third party "liberatarian" like Perot would do to sap off GOOP votes this year.

For all the bitching people say about Nader in 2000 (and, yes, I believe he helped contribute to Gore losing) it was nothing like the damage Perot did to Poppy Bush in '92.

[deutsey]

5. I thought he was going to win, but I was shocked by how early he

was declared the projected winner. I was expecting a long night of watching election results and it seemed like I had just sat down with a beer to watch and suddenly Clinton was being called the winner.

[yellowcanine]

6. Just a note - this race is more like 1980 than 1992, imo.

An incumbent president, with a foreign policy disaster and a struggling economy, who polls below 50% but still leads or only slightly trails the challenger - thus the media proclaims the race "too close to call" right up to the eve of the election. The debates proved to be crucial in establishing the presidential bona fides of the challenger. A key difference is that Carter actually did not do badly in the debates - he was far more composed and articulate than * was in the first debate. Most of the undecideds broke Reagan's way at the end - even so, the popular vote really wasn't that much of a landslide, if I remember correctly, but the EV was.

[ALago1]

8. Interesting

Thanks for the info...

[JI7]

7. Clinton won by under 50 percent popular vote both elections but

he was still far ahead of his opponents with plurality of votes. and in electoral college he was very much ahead.

[onehandle]

9. I wasn't. IMO, he won at the Democratic Convention.

I listened to him talk and knew immediately that he was our next President.

Kerry may not be "Elvis", but he is the most Presidential candidate from either party since Kennedy. He'll win too.