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Politics : Electoral College 2000 - Ahead of the Curve -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe NYC who wrote (608)	11/7/2000 3:30:15 PM
From: TraderGreg	Respond to of 6710

Sorry to be repetitive, but it bugs me whenever I hear how Ross Perot cost Bush the 1992 election. They think of what Perot says of Clinton now(and even in '96) but they so easily forget the zeitgeist of 1992 was far different. In 1992, Ross Perot got 19% of the vote, but, IMHO, he did not cost the elder Bush the election. Point in fact, the '92 vote had approx 12mm voters that didn't vote in '88 or in '96. Those 12 mm were primarily Perot voters. It is not a stretch to conclude that the vast majority of the Perot voters would not have voted in '92 had he not been running. Anyway, of the residual voters who went with Perot, Clinton would have still gotten a chunk of those, since Perot's anger was always more directed towards Bush. If you recall, when Perot was solidly in the lead in early/mid '92, Clinton was running THIRD. When Ross did his temporary withdrawal, it was Clinton who moved up in the polls, not Bush. The upshot is that unless between 60 and 70% of ALL the Perot voters had voted for Bush in key states, Clinton would have still received the majority of the electoral votes. Moreover, since more than half of the Perot voters wouldn't have voted were he not in the race, it would have been impossible for Bush to have gotten 70% of the ENTIRE Perot vote. I will agree that Perot took votes away from Dole in 1996 since by that time, Perot was clearly anti-Clinton and his backers would never have voted for Clinton. But, in '96, Clinton's margins over Dole were too significant for Perot voters to have helped Dole. Remember, the Perot vote dropped by 12mm in '96.