I particularly recommend the last of the several statements.
GLS
***********************************
Editor's Note: Below are five authoritative answers to my query about the
impact of the Perot vote in 1992, along with insightful projections
concerning 1996..--RPF
{1}
From: "Gerald Pomper" <gpomper@rci.rutgers.edu>
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 1996 17:16:54 -0400
A recent correspondent questions why Perot votrers seem to be coming
evenly from potential Clinton and Dole voters in 1996 when they
were largely Republican in 1992. This is wrong. Perot voters in 1992
split lamost evenly between Clinton and Buish supporters. It is true
that in 1994 the Perot voters of 1992 tended, 2-1, to support
Republican candidates for Congress in the mideterm elections.
By splitting evenly this year, they may only be reverting to theiur
earlier behaviuor. Or their preferences may just be unformed at
this point. The Perot people are the least anchored of all, so their
behavior is likely to be volatile, unpredictable, and even weird.
G. Pomper, Rutgers U. (gpomper@rci.rutgers.edu)
{2}
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 1996 19:53:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: Robert Yale Shapiro <rys4@columbia.edu>
My recollection is that the exit poll showed that Perot took just a bit
more from Bush than Clinton. But the critical question is how did this
play out state by state, given the electoral college system? Current
polls seem to show a slightly greater Perot take from Clinton than Dole,
but probably because Clinton has a substantial lead--more support "at
risk" so to speak, so percentage "take" should be calculated as a
percentage of the level of support for each candidate. It could be that
Perot's support comes from anti-incumbent voters.
Bob Shapiro, Columbia University, rys3@columbia.edu
{3}
Date: Sat, 13 Apr 1996 16:55:05 -0500 (CDT)
From: "John F. Reynolds" <jreynold@lonestar.jpl.utsa.edu>
Regarding the Perot vote, surveys that I have seen to date concur that
the Perot voters in 1992 split about equally in noting whether their next
preference would be Clinton or Bush. Likewise, current day Perot
supporters are said to come equally out of the Dole and Clinton Vote
(though I saw recently that there has been a major shift in the Perot
profile -- many of his upscale supporters of 1992 are no longer with him
but he has drawn more support from middle and working class Americans who
are -- I presume -- drawn by his comments on NAFTA and its effect on Am.
jobs and wages. I suppose Buchanan had something to do with this.)
But I don't think these findings are enough to make the case that he
affects both candidacies about equally. Every political campaign has to
stake out a constituency that they need to win. That is, they develop a
profile of who their supporters are. The Perot voters of 1992 -- white
and middle and upper class males -- were the types of guys that Bush and the
Reps. were depending on.
This time around -- if Perot galvanizes working class support by
linking trade to the static wage levels -- he may represent a bigger
threat to Clinton. I don't see this happening however. Only a guy like
Buchanan could possibly pull it off, and Perot doesn't seem to view him as
a member of the movement (or perhaps Perot fears he may lose control of
the organization if they nominate Buchanan). I expect Perot to return to
the issue of the deficit once he hears the people's call (which is
actually an his own echo) this summer, and in this case he will be a
bigger threat to Dole as he seeks the votes of the well to do worried
about taxes and the like.
Jack Reynolds
U. of Texas at San Antonio
{4}
Date: Sat, 13 Apr 1996 18:12:42 -0500 (EST)
From: KFRANKOVIC@delphi.com
Marty Gilens is correct. The exit poll data from 1992 (as well as nearly
all the pre-election surveys that year) indicate that those who voted for
Perot would have divided evenly between Bush and Clinton in a two-way race.
Much of the reasoning behind the "pro-Republican" characterization of the
Perot vote comes from the 1994 elections. In that exit poll, 1992 Perot
voters who turned out overwhelmingly voted Republican for Congress. Up
until the last month or so, national polls have continued to suggest that
voters drawn to Perot (both in 1992 and in a possible 1996 run) would be
much more likely to choose a Republican in the presidential race than to
vote for Bill Clinton. More recent surveys have suggested that a Perot
candidacy would take votes equally from Clinton and Dole.
Of course, there are other ways of supporting the claim that Perot hurt
Bush more than Clinton than the exit polls. Two candidates were criticizing
the incumbent in 1992. And Perot's withdrawal at the time of the
Democratic convention coundn't have come at a worse time for Bush. Many of
the "volunteers" seemed more like dissatisfied Republicans than Democrats.
And, of course, there is always the fact that many reporters writing today
are just mis-remembering!
Kathy Frankovic
CBS News
{5}
Date: Sat, 13 Apr 1996 22:30:35 -0700 (PDT)
From: David Lauter <David.Lauter@latimes.com>
The question of which candidate Perot hurt worst in 1992--and by
extension, which one he would most damage in 1996--is a complicated issue
not resolvable solely by exit polling data.
I covered Bill Clinton for the LA Times in the 1992 election. As is the
usual practice, we had two reporters on the beat taking turns on the
coverage, and as we had scheduled things for my partner to cover the
final week of the campaign, I sat down with Clinton for a final
pre-election interview about a week before the balloting. I told him I
thought he would win. He concurred, then said the only unsettled variable
was the size of Perot's vote. I asked him how he assessed Perot's impact,
and he replied that his worry was Perot's support might collapse
completely as voters finally made up their minds. If the Perot vote
dropped below about 10%, he said, he would be in trouble because the
first tier of Perot's support--the hard core--was made up primarily of
people who would never vote for a Democrat but who had soured on Bush.
After that, the next tier of Perot's support drew from both parties, but
somewhat more from potential Clinton supporters, he said. If Perot
somehow started to rise again above 25%, Clinton added, then he would
clearly be helping Bush. In the end, he said, he guessed Perot would get
15%-20% and that he, Clinton, would win.
Clinton was armed, of course, both with excellent political insight and
with very good pre-election polling, and he got the analysis right.
The election-night exit polls showed that those who voted for Perot would
have split their votes pretty much equally between Bush and Clinton had
Perot not been in the race. The notion that Perot's vote came mostly from
the GOP and cost Bush the election is a fiction.
But, that is not the end of the analysis.
Clinton's 1992 vote was almost identical to Michael Dukakis' 1988 vote.
The reason Clinton won and Dukakis lost was that the 1988 Republican vote
split between Bush and Perot.
Those two statements might seem contradictory, but they are not. Bush's
problem was that he lost a large part of the coalition that elected him
in 1988--blue-collar workers, for example, who voted for him against
Dukakis, but deserted him four years later. Even if Perot had not been in
the race, many of those voters would not have gone back to Bush. They had
given up on the incumbent and would have voted for Clinton.
There is, however, another element of the analysis: the campaign.
Perot during the course of the 1992 campaign attacked both Clinton and
Bush, but the majority of his scorn was clearly focused on the incumbent.
The fact that he was in the campaign--and in the debates--attacking Bush
as out of touch and ineffective clearly helped to validate Clinton's own
criticisms and proved of great assistance to the challenger. Perot, as my
colleague Ron Brownstein put it in a post-election analysis in 1992,
acted as ``a solvent'' to help break up Bush's support--some of which
then drifted over to Clinton.
What of 1996?
In the past three-and-a-half years, the base of Perot's support has
shrunk, but it has also changed character. In 1992, about a quarter of
Perot's vote came from up-scale, socially liberal, economically
conservative voters who were traditionally Republicans but who had given
up on Bush. Most of that vote has now gone back to the GOP. What remains
in Perot's camp is a group of Americans that is more down-scale--less
educated, lower-income, more alienated. To the extent that those folks
vote, they would more likely be Democrats than Republicans, although they
also tend to be anti-incumbent. But because that group of Americans is
less likely to vote than most, both Perot's overall support and the
extent to which he damages Clinton are probably overstated by current polls.
Perot could significantly hurt Clinton if, as in 1992, he concentrates
most of his fire on the incumbent, building a sense that things are going
bad and that ``change'' is needed. In that case, the effect of his
campaign would be to enlarge the pool of anti-incumbent voters,
providing a net plus to Dole even as he draws away some Dole votes.
But, if Perot fails to mount a critique of Clinton that clicks with
voters the way his criticism of Bush did, he will not enlarge the
anti-incumbent pool, but merely split it--helping to cement
Clinton's re-election.
*****************************************************************************
DAVID LAUTER
Political Editor
Los Angeles Times
Times Mirror Sq./Los Angeles 90053
Lauter@news.latimes.com