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[dsc]

42. No they just plain do not

sorry but that is flat out, gold carat wrong.

Here are several links that back me up.

http://www.pollingreport.com/hibbitts1202.htm

Pre-election Polls
We have pre-election polls and exit polling to make an assessment of what impact Perot actually had on the outcome. In a three-way match-up nationally, in early June 1992, Perot led with 39%, Bush was second with 31%, while Bill Clinton trailed with 25%, according to Gallup. Perot exited the race during the Democratic convention in mid-July. In the immediate aftermath of the convention, Gallup had Clinton leading Bush 56% to 34%, clearly a post-convention bounce. But a month later, Clinton still led -- by between 17 and 25 points -- in half a dozen national media polls, with President Bush not exceeding 37% of the vote in any of them. In mid-September, with Perot still out of the race, an ABC News/Washington Post poll gave Clinton a commanding 58%, with the incumbent still stuck at a very familiar 37%.

Then, on October 1st, Perot re-entered the race. An October 8-11 poll -- done by the Times Mirror Center for The People & The Press, directed by the outstanding Andrew Kohut -- found that Clinton had dropped to 48%, with Bush at 35%, and Perot at 8% (in mid-September, they had found Clinton leading Bush 53%-38%). An October 20-22 follow-up poll of the same 1,153 voters surveyed earlier in the month found that Clinton had slipped to 44%, while Bush held at 34%, and Perot had jumped to 19%. The very first sentence of the extensive press release, dated October 26, 1992, noted that, “Ross Perot's surge in the polls is drawing somewhat more support from Bill Clinton than from George Bush, and the third party candidate seems poised to make more gains that might further narrow Bill Clinton's nationwide margin.” That press release came out the same morning that Perot’s bizarre charges that Republicans had conspired to ruin his daughter’s wedding floated into the general political consciousness, and that was the end of the Perot surge. Nonetheless, he still drew 19% on Election Day, to Clinton’s 43% and Bush’s 37.5%.

What do we learn in sum from these pre-election polls? First, we learn that from mid-July through September of 1992, Clinton’s lead over Bush was at its greatest, nationally, and consistently ranged at or in excess of 15 points, except for a very brief time after the Republican convention. Second, we learn that the race began to narrow as Perot picked up support after re-entering the race. Clinton ended up winning by about 5.5 percentage points, far below his peak margins of the summer.

Third, and most important, we learn that the vote share of President Bush stayed within a narrow range in all of the polls. In the polls cited above, his vote share ranged from a low of 31% to a high of 38%, and he ended with 37.5%. The “change” vote oscillated between the two challengers -- when Perot was up, Clinton was down, and vice versa. Beyond the polls I’ve cited, the vast majority of other public polls taken between mid-July and the election showed Bush in the same range, and Clinton with the same kind of lead in a two-way match-up. Bush’s numbers just did not move very much, regardless of whether Perot was in the race or out of it.

http://www.leinsdorf.com/perot.htm

But did Perot defeat Bush? First, look at the turnout. Perot got 19,660,450 votes. The total turnout was more than 13 million higher than in 1988. So, even though Perot got a lot of votes, 13 million of those voters didn't vote in 1988. Clinton ran 3.1 million votes ahead of Dukakis, but Bush received 9.7 million fewer votes than four years earlier. The two party vote fell by 7 million. So, Perot only took 7 million votes from the two parties combined. If Perot had not been in the race, would those 7 million Perot voters who voted for Bush and Dukakis in 1988 have voted for Bush by a sufficient margin for him to overcome Clinton's 3.1 million vote lead. Those 7 million Perot voters would have had to favor Bush over Clinton by 5 to 2. Or, even if all 19.6 million Perot voters had voted for one of the major party candidates, they would have had to favor Bush by a 58% to 42% margin to overcome clinton's lead and tie the race. Was this likely in view of the fact that the other 84 million voters were favoring Clinton by 7%, 53.5% to Bush's 46.5%?

The 1992 presidential election was an analyst's dream. Usually, the presidential candidate runs far ahead of the rest of the ticket. Perot's presence in the presidential race combined with an absence of running mates for lesser offices meant that Clinton and Bush ran behind their respective party's nominees for Governor, Senator and the House. Consequently, it was easy to follow Perot's voters as they voted for other offices. They voted for Democratic and Republican Governor, Senator and House of Representative candidates in sufficient numbers to give them higher vote totals than Clinton and Bush.

This assumes that all Clinton's supporters voted for the other Democratic candidates and all Bush's supporters voted for the Republican candidates for Governor, Senator and the House. Since Republican candidates for other offices received more votes than Bush, and Democratic candidates for other offices received more votes than Clinton, this is a statistically valid assumption. The higher vote totals for the non-presidential candidates had to come from Perot's voters.

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.


http://www.salon.com/2011/04/04/third_party_myth_easterbrook/

Next up: Ross Perot and 1992. Easterbook argues that George H.W. Bush lost because the Texas billionaire “siphoned off conservative votes.” False.

The endurance of this particular myth, regular readers will recognize, is particularly bothersome to me, and I’ve written about it several times. Easterbrook is hardly the only one who’s still pushing it. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard someone matter-of-factly make this claim in the past few years. Generally, it’s from conservatives who like to pretend that Bill Clinton’s ’92 victory was a fluke, but there are liberals who still fall for it too.

Instead of recounting all of the details of the ’92 race here, I’ll simply refer you to one of my previous posts on the subject. If you want the Cliff’s Notes version it goes like this: (1) Economic anxiety was high, causing Bush’s poll numbers to drop to poisonous levels — by the fall of ’92 he was not an incumbent who, on paper, should have won reelection; (2) Not a single public opinion poll from the middle of July (when Perot dropped out the race) through the end of September (when Perot returned) gave Bush a lead over Clinton — not even in the immediate wake of the August ’92 GOP convention. In fact, Clinton’s average lead in this period was double-digits — and the race was not tightening at the time Perot jumped back in; (3) A comprehensive national exit poll found that Perot voters were divided almost evenly on their second choice and that Clinton — in a two-way race — would still have beaten Bush by 5.8 million votes (his actual margin was 5.3 million in initial ’92 tally). Here’s how the Washington Post summarized the exit poll:


Ross Perot’s presence on the 1992 presidential ballot did not change the outcome of the election, according to an analysis of the second choices of Perot supporters.

The analysis, based on exit polls conducted by Voter Research & Surveys (VRS) for the major news organizations, indicated that in Perot’s absence, only Ohio would have have shifted from the Clinton column to the Bush column. This would still have left Clinton with a healthy 349-to-189 majority in the electoral college.

And even in Ohio, the hypothetical Bush “margin” without Perot in the race was so small that given the normal margin of error in polls, the state still might have stuck with Clinton absent the Texas billionaire.

In most states, the second choices of Perot voters only reinforced the actual outcome. For example, California, New York, Illinois and Oregon went to Clinton by large margins, and Perot voters in those states strongly preferred Clinton to Bush.


I could go on, but I really shouldn't have to. You are just plain wrong.