Asymmetrical Information

Not so certain about Perot (obviously Nader took few votes from Bush II)

Perot attracted moderates and discontents from both parties and the analysis I've seen is at best 60/40 bush voters

I was under the impression that Perot's vote-stealing distribution was pretty evenly divided between the two parties, and that the CW that Perot "handed the election to Clinton" was accordingly mistaken.

"In the Governor's races, Perot's voters cast 18% of their ballots for the Republican candidates; 56% of their ballots for Democratic candidates, 17% for independent candidates, and 8% did not bother to vote for Governor. If Perot's voters had voted for Bush and Clinton in the same proportion that the voted for the Republican and Democratic candidates for Governor, Clinton's lead would have increased by 7.5 million votes.

In the Senate races, Perot's supporters voted 27% for the Republican candidates, 24% for the Democratic candidates, 23% for the independent candidates, and 24% skipped the Senate races entirely. (This does not include states that did not have Senate races.)

In the House races, Perot's voters cast 22% of their ballots for Republican candidates, 19% for Democratic candidates, 18% for independent candidates, and 40% did not vote in House races."

Appears Repubs just live in a world of myth and legend

The question of who Perot voters would have voted for in the absence of his candidacy aside – I thought that Bush 41 ran a weak campaign and lost primarily due to his breaking of his “no new taxes” pledge and misinformation about the State of the economy (which was doing pretty well by the time he ran for reelection).

Further, I think it is unwise for a candidate to either (a) blame a third party candidate for stealing “their votes” or (b) hope for a third party candidate to “steal” “the other guy’s votes.”

Votes belong to the voter and it is up to the candidate and his or her campaign to persuade the voter to lend them their vote on the second Tuesday of November. They may lend them unwisely but it is theirs none the less.

I believe there's also the matter that Perot attracted many voters to the polls who otherwise would not have voted.

Whereas I have heard on the left that Buchanan at the convention and smart electoral college strategy by Carville helped Clinton win

I have heard that, for instance, Repubs took Congress in 1994 because: Clinton Health Care Bill,Contract with America,demographic shifts,party affiliation shifts, and recently,redistricting in the South

With tens of millions of people voting in fifty very different states on hundreds of elections (and the Perot numbers above make it seem local races are important, or maybe not :)), I have virtually given up on analyzing election returns.

I will leave it up to the professionals, like Charlie Cook, or Trippi, or Rove with the constant understanding that a lot of powerful very smart people get completely shocked in every election

Yeah, my recollection is that Perot helped Clinton, but not by that much. He attracted a bunch of Dem voters too. And of course the closeness of the 2000 election put it into a whole different ballpark anyway.

Plus, conservatives didn't like GHWB that much anyway....

The couple of Nader voters I know personally were consciously withholding their votes from the Democrats because they did not see the Democrats as progressive enough. They hoped to "send a message".

I have no idea whether this was in fact the attitude of the typical Nader voter/Green, but most mainstream Democrats perceive it as such, and consider it to be intolerably self-righteous, especially given the unmitigated disaster the resulting Bush presidency has turned out to be.

The 1992 election was . . . interesting.

Certainly, the election-day "who would you have voted for" polls would have had Clinton beat Bush if Perot wasn't in the race, and so the Nader analogy fails. But Perot still arguably (not definitely) cost Bush the election.

How? In July 1992, just before the Democratic National Convention, the polls showed Bush in the lead with about 40%, Perot #2 with 35%, and Clinton #3 with support around 25%. Polls that postulated a two-way race had Bush beating Clinton handily, as Perot voters evenly split between the two parties.

Perot then dropped out on day four of the Democratic convention, announcing that the candidates had addressed his concerns. The specific statement and timing amounted to an endorsement of Clinton. With that, instead of splitting evenly, almost all the Perot supporters polled were now in the Clinton camp. Clinton's poll numbers shot up to the high fifties in a two-way race. Clinton was, with that one sudden and dramatic event, ahead of Bush for the rest of the campaign.

(Perot's October re-entry drew voters from Clinton and Bush in about equal numbers, from dissatisfied voters willing to support a flake who'd dropped out as a protest vote. Thus his re-entry had essentially no effect.)

My advice: don't trust early polls at all, trust late polls very little

Every candidate gets a very solid bounce out of the convention, those numbers at least partly reflect that.

Do you think current presidential polls mean much

Well, from a die hard libertarian point of view. Conservatives don't get upset because, even if they feel that Perot was a fruitcake, most conservatives know that he was the only candidate telling the truth.

Our government is bankrupt, our politicians are stinky filthy liars, and if the people don't do something quick, there will be no getting out of this mess.

All I can do is speak for myself. I don't know who this "most conservatives" fellow is.

I voted for Perot. I regret having done so. Who do I blame? Me. End of story. I don't know if I contributed to the defeat of GWHB, and I don't much care. I can only say that Perot appeared to have offered some business acumen in the pursuit of more fiscally responsible government, and that's what I was interested in at the time.

Perot to Nader is apples to oranges. For one thing, Perot actually had a legitimate chance of winning, whereas Nader's candidacy was at best a protest, at worst an ego trip. For another, Perot was sucking votes from the middle, while Nader's votes were coming mostly from the left. If Buchanan had drawn enough support away from Bush in 2000 to throw the election to Gore, you can bet he'd've been feeling the wrath of mainstream Republicans.

I voted for Perot but only because living in New York my vote for Bush would have no effect.
The reason I don't blame Perot is because I felt and a lot of others felt that Bush had lost our confidence through his bad decisions.
Taxes
Not taking Saddam out when he had the chance.

Those were the two major ones but he ran a bad campaign too.

I'm not mad a Nader. He did the same kind of crap he always does. He would have made a horrible president. Most of us liberals knew that. I'm not angry at him. I'm mad at the people in swing states (like Oregon and Tennessee) who voted for him. They got what they deserved. Unfortunately the rest of us have to suffer for it.

On balance, Perot hurt Bush more. But the biggest factor in the election was the fact that a large number of swing voters believed Clinton/Gore whopper about the worst economy in 50 years. Perhaps they believed it because the networks worked overtime repeating the lie and running stories designed to empahsize economic hard times. Exit polls showed that voters thought that their own economic situation was fine, but they were worried that others weren't doing as well. The lie was believed. Clinton won.

We are seeing a repeat now with the bogus "jobless recovery" mantra.

I think that Perot may have cost Bush 41 the election, but you have to remember that conservatives were pretty lukewarm about Bush 41 (and Dole in '96 for that matter). If Perot had handed the '84 election to Mondale, then there definitely be some right wingers calling for his head but I think most conservatives believe that Bush 41 was undone by his mishandling of domestic issues. That Perot stepped in to exploit it and that Clinton was the eventual beneficiary is an effect, not a cause.

(From a foreigner's perspective...) I still think Nader's "Tweedledee/Tweedledum" comparision was fair.

I'm sure Gore would have had protectionist trade policy, bombed some 3rd world nations, and eroded domestic freedoms, just like Bush did, and just like Dean would if elected.

The only difference is the liberation of Iraq - which would have be applauded by the left if anyone but Bush had done it.

The Iraqis probably think Nader's run was a success.

Perhaps most conservatives were already disillusioned with Bush 1?
After all,even he admitted he had no agenda,no"vision thing" during his presidency.
The same ,in fact,could be said about his son,if not for 9/11 and the WoT.

I was a "responsible" Nader voter. Gore was far ahead of Bush in my state, so I traded my Gore vote for a Nader by a more lefty friend in a swing state who feared votes for Nader would throw the state to Bush. So he preserved his scruples, and my vote had no measurable effect. Isn't that what happens in most elections? I think I can count on one finger the number of times I've voted for a presidential candidate who actually won, and I rarely vote for 3rd-party candidates.

P.S. My American perspective is surprisingly like Peter's foreign one. If Bush looks to be far ahead in 2004, I probably won't vote for him, especially if he keeps Cheney. If it looks close and the opposition is one of the current Democratic candidates, I just might have to vote for Bush. I find that prospect discomforting, but not as bad as the alternative.

"(From a foreigner's perspective...) I still think Nader's "Tweedledee/Tweedledum" comparision was fair."

Even if the rest of your comment is accurate, do you think Gore's domestic policies (taxes, environment, etc.) would have been the same as Bush's?

Not the same, but not sufficiently different for Nader voters to care which way the election went.

"Appears Repubs just live in a world of myth and legend."

QUITE the contrary bob mcmanus.

The whole case for Republicans not being mad at Perot is that it is doubtful he cost Bush the election and we know that. That is the whole point of her question and this thread.

If we actually DID "live in a world of myth and legend" we would believe Al Gore invented the internet, Bill Clinton never had sex with that woman and that he certainly never inhaled.

We would also believe that a Democrat that made the butterfly ballot in Florida rigged it so a Republican would win. We would believe Gore had the election stolen even though over 2 dozen recounts (many by democrats) said Bush won by a larger number than first thought.

We'd believe that the Iraqi people were better off with Saddam Hussein and that the war was about oil. We'd also believe that just because Saddam and Osama aren't on the EXACT same page of their shared religion they would NEVER help each other harm the U.S.

We'd believe that Bush lied about Saddam having weapons of Mass Destruction but we'd also believe Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Tom Daschle and of course Bill Clinton were TELLING THE TRUTH when they all said Saddam had WMD.

(I know Bush is evil and all but how DID he get in that time machine and get Bill Clinton to make all those speeches accusing Saddam of having WMD?)

No Bob... The Republicans do not "live in a world of myth and legend." If we did-- we'd be called Democrats.

I traded my Gore vote for a Nader by a more lefty friend in a swing state who feared votes for Nader would throw the state to Bush. So he preserved his scruples, and my vote had no measurable effect. Isn't that what happens in most elections?

I would be shocked if even 1% of the votes in any general election were traded in anything like that manner. Or did you mean that your vote usually didn't matter?

I voted for GWHB in 1992, but with little enthusiasm, for the reasons most often stated above: I was grieved that he incited the Iraqi uprisings and then abandoned them (I told a friend the day we found out that I was actually, for the first time since 1975, ashamed to be an American); and I was disgusted at the tax sellout in 1990--and especially at Bush's cavalier attitude about it.

I never considered voting for Perot, whom I considered to be a nutjob. I also believed Mr. Clinton's campaign rhetoric sufficiently to believe that, in a period of relative threat abatement, he might prove a safe pair of hands: recalling that the previous Democratic candidates had been Dukakis, Mondale, and Carter.

We may have forgotten it now, but Clinton campaigned as a moderate-to-conservative Democrat: and I always believed he had the opportunity to be the Democratic Eisenhower--a president who led his party out of the political wilderness, and compelled it to accept the new political environment in which it found itself.

The historical jury is still out on President Clinton: if Mrs. Clinton becomes President (in 2008 or perhaps 2012) campaigning (and governing) as a relative moderate--and in particular as a foreign and security policy hawk--in other words as a kind of latter-day version of Scoop Jackson--it could still happen.

As someone who voted for Bush in 88 and Harry Browne in 92, I don't think Perot cost Bush I the election. Bush I did. He did so by losing my vote and a lot of other people's.

But even if every Perot voter would have voted Bush (highly unlikely) had he not been in the race, few right-of-center types would "blame" him for losing because Perot was never "one of us." Nader has been a prominent figure in left-of-center circles for a generation. Griping at him - and the people who voted for him - for "costing" them the election always appears to me like the reaction to a perceived betrayal. Perot wasn't guilty of any such betrayal.

If Republicans were looking for anyone to scapegoat for that loss, I think Pat Buchanan's (highly damaging) primary campaign is a much likely target.

This is me with a bit of armchair psycho-babble that is also broad generalization, but...

It seems to me that conservatives and libertarians, while bothered by Ross Perot's impact on Bush's reelection chances, didn't get their knickers in a twist about it because it was a 'fair' campaign, i.e.; run according to the rules. Oh, and Bush I was really uninspiring.

Liberals just seem to get all wound up whenever they lose and are willing to do nearly anything to win. Witness the shenanigans on the switching of Senate candidates in NJ (?) when it became obvious the first candidate would lose. Or what they did in Missouri to make sure Carnahan got in. They go to great lengths to change the rules, even through the courts. They still won't accept that Bush won - no matter how you counted the votes in FL. He stole the election that, in their view, was rightfully theirs.

For Libs the end justifies the means, to Conservatives the means matter.

Sam,

I didn't mean to imply that silly vote trading is usual in elections. I meant that people who seek above all to preserve their ideological purity generally have a less decisive effect than people who hold their noses and vote for the least worst candidate. The latter are the ones who swing elections, but they don't show up on either donor lists or in "likely voter" polls.

Appears Repubs just live in a world of myth and legend

And you said that with a straight face to one liberatarian with a possible misconception? Pardon me, I just heard a scream from the break room. We keep the Principles of Logical Reasoning back there, and I think they cried out in pain by voodoo association.

Then I heard a second scream right about the time Paul posted his own broad-brush dudgeon.

I should point out that the Principles have feelings, just like you or me. They yearn for respect. They want to be heeded. And they have a disturbingly large collection of automatic weaponry. You wouldn't want to "disappoint their expectations" now, would you?

Nader differed from Perot in that although he brought people to the polls who otherwise would not have voted, those very people would never have voted for Bush. When those people cast votes down the ballot (congress, governors, etc.) those votes were almost all for Democrats and probably put some Dem candidates into office who would otherwise have lost tight races. One example would be Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA).

No rage, because we should have known better. Ross ran a good, if weird campaign, and would have won if he had simply not melted down. But looking back, we realize that we got suckered and really have no one to blame but ourselves. Whether Ross was a real independent or a Democrat stalking horse, I don't know, nor care. I voted for him (as did a lot of other would be Bush voters) and because of that, we got Bill Clinton.

If someone beats you, being angry at them for that point is kind of self insulting. It might be cheating, but you were still dumb enough to fall for it.

Ross Perot was only partly responsible for the defeat of President George Bush 41. The latter did himself in by reneging on his no tax promise. That is the number one reason why the elder Bush lost.

Republicans are far more mature and honest than Democrats. We are willing to accept blame for our own mistakes. The Democrat Party is mostly comprised of whiney and immature children.

I got the impression the GHWB was just going through the motions and really wasn't all that interested in winning in '92. Anybody else feel that way.

Jim English
Chicago

“Anybody else feel that way.”

I totally agree with you. My guess is that Bush 41 subconsciously did not desire a second term. A cynic once remarked that he had already fulfilled his goal of becoming president. The job was starting to bore him to death. This is the only reason I can find for Bush’s ludicrous self destructive decision to renege on the no tax pledge. Common sense dictated that he would get virtually nothing in return from the Democrats. They merely stabbed Bush in the back---which is what any reasonable person would have expected.

Because Republicans are more stable than Democrats? Oh - but that Berkeley study showed that conservatives are all nuts. Must be something else.

On the Tweedledee/Tweedledum issue -- whenever a student tells me there's no difference between the two parties I always ask "Then why are your professors not more randomly divided in their registration between the two parties?"

What a fascinating question! Perhaps even more intriguing are the responses, or the fact that so many of your readers appear to be left of center.

Before I post my response - which is related but off subject - here is my disclaimer: I voted for Bush in 88, Perot in 92, Clinton in 96 (reluctantly) and Bush in 2000. My liberal friends think I am ultra-conservative, and my conservative friends think I am a flaming liberal. For what it's worth to this board, like Megan I think that the end result of the impeachment of Clinton was about right.

Here goes. I don't love Bush, and I have more than a few criticisms I'd like to share with him. On balance, though, I think he has done a pretty good job under very trying circumstances. I certainly don't see him as the anti-Christ, as so many liberals do.

Rhetoric aside, what exactly has Bush done that's so awful?

I've been asking this question a lot, and while I have gotten plenty of frothy responses, I have yet to hear a dispassionate, reasoned and informed answer. Indeed, to date I have only received answers that have betrayed either an astounding degree of ignorance or death-penalty limiting intelligence.

Any assistance would be welcome. Fire away.

What a fascinating question! Perhaps even more intriguing are the responses, or the fact that so many of your readers appear to be left of center.

Before I post my response - which is related but off subject - here is my disclaimer: I voted for Bush in 88, Perot in 92, Clinton in 96 (reluctantly) and Bush in 2000. My liberal friends think I am ultra-conservative, and my conservative friends think I am a flaming liberal. For what it's worth to this board, like Megan I think that the end result of the impeachment of Clinton was about right.

Here goes. I don't love Bush, and I have more than a few criticisms I'd like to share with him. On balance, though, I think he has done a pretty good job under very trying circumstances. I certainly don't see him as the anti-Christ, as so many liberals do.

Rhetoric aside, what exactly has Bush done that's so awful?

I've been asking this question a lot, and while I have gotten plenty of frothy responses, I have yet to hear a dispassionate, reasoned and informed answer. Indeed, to date I have only received answers that have betrayed either an astounding degree of ignorance or death-penalty limiting intelligence.

Any assistance would be welcome. Fire away.

I voted for GHW Bush in 1988, but I voted for Perot in 1992.

I didn't like voting for a paranoid kook, but Clinton seemed to be entirely untrustworthy, and Bush had had his shot and done poorly.

I wanted to find some reason to vote for Bush, because I thought Clinton was a potentially dangerous liar, but I was convinced, and still am convinced, that it would have been wrong to reward Bush with a second term.

My biggest disappointment with Bush probably should have been the way he and General Schwarzkopf abandoned the Shiites to massacre in southern Iraq, but I didn't know enough about it at the time.
My biggest disappointment was that he called himself the "Education President" but he did almost nothing to help improve our schools. As a public high school teacher, I would have climbed a fiery volcano to vote for him if he had used his office to support some kind of school vouchers, for example. But he never was very interested in schools one way or another.

When Clinton was elected, I was hopeful he would try to leave his dishonest ways behind him. After all, if he couldn't turn over a new leaf after his inauguration, then he was even worse than I thought he was. So I was truly disappointed, though not surprised into shock, when he merely took his devious and shameless persona to a higher level.

As for Nader's stealing votes from Gore, I would say it was divine providence if I believed in God. Clinton was the Huey Long of presidents. We desperately needed a decent, honest man like W to renew the office of the Presidency.
I can see why liberals and partisan Democrats were upset about it -- but on the other hand, I thought was very strange of Mr. "Earth in the Balance" Gore not to mention the environment during his campaign (he was too busy attacking those evil drug companies!!!). He was practically begging for a challenge from his left flank, and he got it.

I apologize for the tone of my second post. It was immoderate, insulting, deliberately provocative. The definition of trolling. I have done that before here.

I visit a lot of blogs, from DenBeste to Lileks to Atrios and Willis. Blogs have a right to a certain amount of clubbishness, of collegiality,of community. I certainly appreciate the time and effort bloggers put into their sites,and deliberately creating an uncomfortable atmosphere is impolite.

And anyway, attempting to communicate across the political spectrum is truly starting to look pointless

The Perot movement drew new voters into the '92 election, more than 13 million over turnout in 1988.

Conservatives tend to think in terms of "baking a bigger pie", and therefore have less problem with Perot than Liberals, who tend to think in terms of zero-sum games and that any one getting a larger slice of the pie does so at some one else's expense, have with Nader.

In these two cases, it may be the Liberals are correct. It is interesting to try to determine how many people turned out to vote for Nader who had been eligible, and NOT voted for ANY candidate, in 1996.

Lighten up Bob. I found the numbers breakdown in your second post to be very informative (I assume they are true). It is a very good way to analyze the question at hand. If you are worried about the myth and legend comment, I personally don't believe it required an apology. In my opinion, it didn't change what was a very interesting post.

Jim English
Chicago

Some of your previous respondents have it right; Bush lost his base with the tax increase he promised wouldn't happen on his watch. No conservative outrage over Perot because the conservatives quit trying to read Bush's lips, I think, and, having concluded that he didn't deserve a second term, really didn't care why he lost. A squeaker election ala Bush/Gore would have produced more analysis then, as it does now. Now that the votes are more or less tallied, only the most intractably myopic could fail to recognize Nader as being at least part of the cause for the Bush/Cheney "success." Conservatives, apparently, like to deride such analysis because it tends to lessen the "accomplishment" of the Republicans in the last election.

"I mean, I'm under the impression that it's pretty much certain that Ross Perot handed the 1992 election to Bill Clinton."

http://www.uselectionatlas.org/USPRESIDENT/frametextj.html

Perot voters would have needed to break for Bush 2/1 for a Bush popular vote victory. As Bob points above, it'd requir a miracle for that ot happen, considering their voting patterns.

Regardless of who Perot helped, there's the little matter of how close the election was.

With Gore coming within 1000 votes of winning the whole shooting match, I can see why people would lash out at anything they can find. Nader's just an easy target...

"Then why are your professors not more randomly divided in their registration between the two parties?"

Marketing.

Jim and David,

I felt the same way about GHWB's campaign--he didn't appear to care if he won the election or not. What aggravated me was his apologetic attitude about so much when all I wanted him to do was to run on his record. And I thought he had a pretty good record. Sure, there was some bad stuff too, such as violating his no new taxes pledge and giving in to the State Department's opinions and not supporting the Kurds after promising support, but on balance I thought he was a pretty good president. Not as good as Reagan, but head and shoulders above Carter.

I never held not seizing Baghdad against him for several reasons. First, GW I was the first war since Korea where the US was fighting as part of a UN force with a stated mission. Once the UN stated mission was accomplished, the war ended. I don't have a problem with that. Second, at the time the war ended, I asked myself whether or not it was worth it for me (or my son) to die trying to take Baghdad, which is how I tend to analyze wars, having been in the Marines with my son now in the Marines, and I had to answer in the negative. BTW, both GW I and GW 2 get affirmative answers from my introspective question, whereas Bosnia and Kosovo did not.

Maybe I just get hung up on the "national security interest" part of the analysis. I am willing (and have been for quite some time) to put my life on the line for our national security, but not for anything else. Perhaps that's part of why I have such a poor opinion of Clinton and Albright--they were more interested in politics than national security.

Any statistical argument is, by its nature, less than completely convincing. Personally I don’t think it can be known what would have happened without Perot, far to many indeterminate variables.

But, yes, if you look at the way voters behaved on election day it looks like GHWB was toast in ’92. Unfortunately that argument rests on the assumption that Perot had no effect on the campaign.

One of the arguments that Perot swung the election is that prior to his entrance into the race Bush was a mildly popular, mildly respected incumbent and all of the Democratic candidates were non-entities. Perot jumped into the race and hammered at Bush relentlessly eventually knocking most of the Reagan Democrats and independents away from Bush. When Perot left the race those ‘free’ voters, who I might add tended to vote Democratic in non-Presidential elections anyway, chose Clinton.

Another argument relies on looking at the final figures and doing a difference analysis:
1988
Rep: 53.37%
Dem: 45.65%

1992
Rep: 37.45
Dem: 43.01
Perot: 18.91

1996
Rep 40.71
Dem: 49.24
Perot: 8.4

2000
Rep 47.87
Dem 48.38
Nader: 2.74

1992: Perot takes 16% from Bush 88 and 2 percent from Dukakis.
1996: Clinton takes 6% from Perot 92, Dole takes 3% from Perot 92.
2000: GWB takes 7% from Perot 96, Nader takes 1% from Clinton 96 and 1 % from Perot 96.

I tend to get vivid images of Richard Connell's The Most Dangerous Game in reading through these discussions. Correspondingly, I second Jim English's response to bob; no need to apologize if you're genuinely playing along!

I was a Republican Precinct Chairman during the '92 and '96 electionsas well as being active in local Party work before and after.
Politicians tend to get more enthusiastic as the their base voters get enthusiastic. Bush lost the '92 election long before the election when he lost the enthusiasm of the base. In '88 the phone banks were buzzing, the door to door folks were pounding the pavement and handing out literature, the yard signs were blooming like weeds. In '92 all the effort was invested in limiting the down ballot damage. Bush lost, not because of Perot but because he lost the support of those precinct level folks that make phone calls, pass out fliers and do the grunt work of political campaigns. The loss wasn't about Perot.
I doubt that Gore lost because of Nader. The local Dem Party workers weren't enthusiastic about him, he fired no one up. Dems weren't voting FOR him, they were voting against Bush.
Does anybody REALLY like Gore? Does he inspire anyone? On my side of the coin, nobody really liked Dole all that much, he didn't inspire anyone, he got the nomination because it was 'his turn' and we had nobody really ready for the big leagues in '96. So it was for Gore in '00. The anger at Nader is misplaced. When a candidate can't carry his home state he's going to lose. Period.

I was quite young at the time, so I don't actually remember this- it's more or less what I've gleaned from other sources.

The main question wasn't whether or not Perot did in fact cause Clinton to win the election. The question was why Republicans weren't mad about Perot allegedly tipping the election the way Democrats are mad at Nader. I think there are a number of reasons

1) It's unclear that Perot even cost Bush the election. All the data in the posts have made this fairly clear. But that alone is not enough. Political anger very often has nothing to do with reality (how many people think W "stole" the Florida election, despite the fact that every single newspaper reported that any count of the ballots still had him winning?). That means there must be other reasons

2) Conservatives/Republicans never thought of Perot as one of their own. As the data above are pretty clear about, Perot took votes from the center, not from the Republican right, so he wasn't pitting the quixotic true believers against the pragmatists, which was the case with Gore/Nader

3) Conservatives lost all faith in Bush, mainly due to 2 reasons: Taxes, and Souter. He broke a promise about the one issue all Republicans are unanimous about (taxes), and he let Republicans down in a big way on an issue that almost all Republicans agree on (judges). All point he gained by nominating Thomas he lost and then some by nominating Souter. On other fronts, he caved in to Ted Kennedy on education (like father, like son). The best analysis of Bush I've heard was (I think Peggy Noonan said this) that he was a "low-budget liberal", i.e., someone who fundamentally agrees with the liberal viewpoint on many issues, but isn't willing to pay the vast sums of money they demand. Remember, it was Bush after all who called Reagan's tax plan "Voodoo economics"

4) I think the biggest reason Conservatives/Republicans (not exactly the same group of people) aren't mad about Perot was that they cleaned up in 1994 and forced Clinton to govern from the center (honestly, would welfare reform ever have passed an all-Democrat government? It was galling to hear Gore claim credit for it. Btw, I'm of the opinion Dick Morris should get the Presidential Medal of Freedom for convincing Clinton to sign it). Similarly, I think that any Democratic anger at Nader would have been totally forgotten if they had done well in the '02 midterms.

In any event, I don't think Nader-hatred will be rememberd anyway. Democrats figured out they hate W a hell of a lot more, and they'll have 5 more years to stew in it, and maybe more than that. Remember, Jeb's in line after W.

Gah,

Interesting analysis, but you assume that Republicans don't take votes from Democrats & vice versa (i.e., the only votes that change are the ones that went to independents).

Quite a leap...

I've seen one issue sort of talked around, so I'll spell it out.

The 1992 election happened within the confines of customary electoral procedure. Everybody's vote got taken into account, or nearly everyone did, and the outcome is clear. There's no question about whether recounting would swing things in some other direction. Even if it were clear that Perot "stole" votes that in some sense belonged to Bush, still, it was basically just another election.

The 2000 election didn't happen within those confines. There is no ground within statistical method to trust any tally as entirely reliable because it's just too damn close, and then the whole thing had to go to the courts, and at that point it becomes in a crucial way someone else's choice rather than mine the voter's. And it seems to me that Democratic voters have a pretty good case for feeling that Nader voters played a substantial part in making that happen.

The other thing is that Nader strikes me, at least - a libertarian with essentially leftist views on a lot of social matters when it comes to tolerance and diversity and such - as just plain offensive in a way that Perot did not. Perot said that the system was broken and that both parties were complicit, but he didn't assert their total moral equivalence, and he never said anything in the Leninist line of wanting things to get worse, which Nader did. When Perot criticizes groups that people I care about belong to, there's a subtext of "they're being foolish or in denial and there'll be trouble"; when Nader criticizes them it's more like "they are evil and deserve to suffer". That gets my hackles up, and I bet I'm not alone in it.

CJ --

Wrong there. A lot of people voted for Nader who otherwise would not have voted or would have voted for Bush. I'm one of them.

While the worst people were saying about Bush was that he was a boot-licker of corporations, the worst we knew about Gore was in regards to illegal campaign contributions from the Red Chinese and the transfer of a lot of critical technology from the U.S. to them (see Loral Aerospace, supercomputers).

Treason overrides any other considerations. Spotted owls, the question of abortion, the "infernal combustion engine" and affirmative action cease to exist as questions in a nuclear exchange -- all the more likely when your enemy gets your technology (see Alger Hiss).

And Buchanan was just damned nutty.

Bruce,

"a libertarian with essentially leftist views on a lot of social matters when it comes to tolerance and diversity and such"

Leftists are known for their tolerence. Pol Pot tolerated everybody who could read right into the grave. Similarly, Stalin tolerated the collective farmers until they starved to death. Castro is so tolerant of people who differ in opinion that he puts them in jail. The ChiComs are so tolerent of different opinions that they put a buullet into the head of anyone who expresses them and then bill the person's family.

I don't believe for a second that you support these leftists or their policies, but be careful with what you identify. Remember, Hitler was a National Socialist.

Tolerence is a virtue of the tolerent. Diversity is likewise a personal choice. Neither has anything to do with left, right or center.

Jim English
Chicago

Perot's candidacy seemed a bit more legitimate. He had a specific, substantive issue, deficits.

Nader was just kind of "the Democrats aren't lefty enough, and they're the same as the GOP anyway, so just vote for me and teach em a lesson" or something.

I think the main thing, though, is simply the closeness of the election.

Bush 41 raised taxes because the Democrats marched into his office and threatened to shut down the government if he didn't.

Bush 41 wouldn't do that.

Fall of 1995. The Republicans tell Clinton they'll shut down the government if he doesn't pass their budget.

Clinton tells them to go, well, you know what he told them to do. The Republicans shut things down, Clinton laughs his way to reelection.

At the risk of repeating what others have already said, I believe that Bush I and Mary Matalin responsible responsible for losing the election. How a President can go from the highest approval ratings in memory to losing a election is mind boggling. Bush I wrote the book on how to alienate his base.

Bush II has learned and will at least throw some hay to the goats once in a while.

The Republicans shut things down, Clinton laughs his way to reelection.

Sorry, yeti, but your memory is a little faulty.

The Republican Congress passed the budget; Clinton didn't like the budget and vetoed it.

Clinton also vetoed all continuing resolutions that would've kept the government running. (Actually the gov't didn't "shut down" only "non-essential services")

So it was Clinton who "shut down the government", but because the news media was (still is) pro-Clinton and anti-Republican and eager to report Democrat spin as if it was truth, the lie that "the Republicans shut down the government" prevails.

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