What if Perot comes second in 1992?

Thande

Thande

Donor
There has been a lot of AH speculation about Ross Perot's independent run for the American presidency in 1992, in which he ran the most successful third party campaign for generations in terms of popular vote, but failed to win any states and therefore electoral votes. Naturally much of this speculation has focused on the idea of Perot winning, but this is quite a high hurdle to climb (no offence intended to the several TLs on this subject, most recently MaskedPickle's). Instead I had the idea of a more modest triumph for Perot: he does carry some states, and comes second in terms of both electoral and popular vote. Clinton still wins and Bush is pushed into third place. Basically think 1912 revisited with Perot in the role of Teddy Roosevelt.

What might the long term effects of this be? Would Perot be able to use his second place finish as a springboard to launch a more powerful Reform Party (perhaps under another name?) What would it mean for the Republicans and for Clinton?
 

NKVD

He could easily, if you butterflied away that fiasco where he briefly dropped out or somesuch.

However...it depends on how much better he'd do if he doesn't drop out. In a lot of states he's behind about twenty percent.
 

Tom Veil

The big problem is that America, unlike most European countries, leaves no room for 3 parties. I know you know that, but it bears repeating because the 2-party bias is so extreme. The Reform Party would need to be strong enough to kill off either the Republicans or the Democrats, or else it would die fast. Perot finishing 2nd in 1992 would be insufficient, and almost beside the point. What Perot needed was to create an organized party apparatus at the state level, so that in the places where the Reform Party had momentum, it could have actually finished 1st in some elections for governors, senators, and representatives. As it was, nothing really got off the ground except in Maine and Minnesota.
 
RogueBeaver

RogueBeaver

What Tom and Paul said. A US third party winning states requires either a partial/total collapse of a major party (TR in 1912, LaFollette in 1924) or a regional base (Wallace '68). Perot had neither.
 
Jasen777

Jasen777

Donor
Paul V McNutt said:
A Perot 2nd place would change nothing.
Click to expand...

There would be changes, though it's difficult to say what exactly. In some ways the Republicans' Contract with America was an outreach to Perot voters. Here the Republicans will be even more desperate to appeal to those voters. They might go protectionist or more moderate on social issues.

The Republicans took the House for the first time in 40 years in '94 in a hugely important landslide election. Will they manage to do as well ITTL?
 

Paul V McNutt

Banned
Jasen777 said:
There would be changes, though it's difficult to say what exactly. In some ways the Republicans' Contract with America was an outreach to Perot voters. Here the Republicans will be even more desperate to appeal to those voters. They might go protectionist or more moderate on social issues.

The Republicans took the House for the first time in 40 years in '94 in a hugely important landslide election. Will they manage to do as well ITTL?
Click to expand...

The Republicans can't go more moderate on social issues too many true believers in the party. Protectionism might rise as a party issue. I still go with this does not change anything so we still get the Republican landslide in 1994.
 

Glass Onion

RogueBeaver said:
What Tom and Paul said. A US third party winning states requires either a partial/total collapse of a major party (TR in 1912, LaFollette in 1924) or a regional base (Wallace '68). Perot had neither.
Click to expand...

If you're arguing that Perot, even if he comes in second in the popular vote and that increase in the Perot vote is distributed more or less equally across the states cannot win any electoral votes whatsoever, then I must respectfully disagree. Granted, you can perhaps argue that Perot coming in second in the popular vote is extremely implausible to begin with, but again, that's our starting point here. If we accept that Perot manages to pull that off, it's hard to see him not winning any states. Perot's increased support probably isn't going to come from nowhere, we are probably looking at the same people voting who voted historically, the difference is that more of them decide to vote for Perot than did historically. Consequently, Perot doing better means that both George Bush and Bill Clinton do slightly worse, at least where the popular vote is concerned. In order for Perot to come in second in the popular vote, he needs to increase his total by about 13 percent. Since Perot's supporters split evenly among would be Bush and would be Bill Clinton supporters, you need about a 6.5 percent decrease in each of their tallies. Granted, this is a implausibly enormous shift in the vote, but again, that seems to be our starting point here.

Given that massive change in the national vote, and presuming that the shift is national rather than something like a huge localized Perot increase in one particular area Perot may end up winning the following states:

Maine, New Hampshire, Kansas, Wyoming, Arizona, Alaska, Nevada, and Montana.

Granted, perhaps my assumptions are questionable, and in all probability he wouldn't win all of those states, I'm presenting a kind of best case scenario for Perot. But given the fact that he beat Bush in Maine historically, coming in second to Clinton there, if Perot takes Bush's place as the runner up in the popular vote it's hard to see how Perot winning Maine is particularly implausible. If Perot wins all the states he possibly can under this scenario, the result is:

Clinton/Gore: 355
Bush/Quayle: 148
Perot/Stockdale: 35

In a sense, you're larger point is probably accurate. Even under this fantastic scenario for the Perot campaign, he still does worse than George Wallace did in 1968, and worse than Thurmond twenty years before that.
 
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