All I know is this. Perot ran on a smaller government platform. He emphasized fiscal responsibility. Those are conservative principles, and it attracted conservative votes.
I am one of those who think Perot helped Clinton but that Clinton would have won in a two-way race as well. The first GHWB just didn’t have the desire to expose his “son” Clinton.
You wrote: "No one can ever tell for sure how Perot affected the 1992 elections"
This kind of contradicts your original post about Perot costing Bush the election, more importantly, as we all should have seen back in 2000 - its the ELECTORAL COLLEGE that matters. It's been too long since I first checked to remember the exact results, but there were just way too many states where, even if Bush got 80% of the votes for Perot (not happening), Clinton still would win all that state's electoral votes. Hell, in my state - MAryland - even if ALL of Perot's votes are given to Bush, Clinton still wins the state.