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A favorite topic of mine we election nerds have discussed before. It would have been a closer race but I think Clinton still would have won narrowly.

Many Perot people would not have voted at all (two NAFTA candidates) and Clinton would have received an appreciable portion of those that did vote. My late grandaunt worked the phones for Perot, she was a democrat who wouldn’t have voted Bush to save her life. Recall Clinton did not run as a flaming lib.

In 1996 I think though that Dole would have gotten the large majority of the Perot vote, resulting in.....a close race that I think Clinton also would have eked out. PA would have been the key state for a narrow Dole EC win.

I looked at this issue very carefully around 20 years ago (boy does time fly). If we redistributed the 1992 Perot vote among Bush, Clinton, other and stayed home as I think would be the likeliest way in each state (e.g., Perot supporters in NC would be likelier to vote for Bush over Clinton than would Perot supporters in MA), my analysis yielded an almost certain pickup by Bush of GA, MT, CO, NV, WI, OH, NH, NJ (yes, New Jersey) and KY if Perot had not reentered the race after dropping out the first time and thus was not on the ballot. That would have given Bush 255 EVs, 15 short of victory. There would be an additional 19 EVs that would be very closely contested: CT (8), IA (7) and ME (4). Had Bush won CT (very possible) and IA (a bit more doubtful), he would have been reelected with exactly 270 EVs; ME’s 4 EVs would not be enough to get Bush to 270 if he didn’t also win the 15 combined EVs from IA and CT. Winning one of the ME CDs would have given Bush a cushion, but please note that the two ME CDs voted almost exactly the same back then (it was prior to GOP gains in rural areas and Democrat gains in suburban areas), so the likeliest result would have been Clinton or Bush winning all four EVs from ME.

Had Bush won reelection in 1992, two things would be likely: The GOP would not pick up the House and Senate in 1994, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer would not have replaced Byron White and Harry Blackmun in the Supreme Court. Had White and Blackmun retired during such 4-year period (which may not have been the case for Blackmun, who would have tried to hold on even after turning 87), Bush’s nominees would have been substantially better than the two reflexive leftists that Clinton nominated. Even if one of the two nominees was another Souter(which would have been unlikely to happen again, although certainly another Kennedy or Roberts could have slipped in), the net gain from Thomas II and Souter II vs. Ginsburg and Breyer would have been a huge boon to proper constitutional interpretation. With even one conservative justice in those two seats, Roberts’s idiotic “it’s a tax” theory would be but a dissent to a Scalia Opinion of the Court striking down Obamacare (if Roberts even floated such theory; I think that he would have voted to strike down Obamacare if there were five other justices already striking it down), and Kennedy would not have four liberals to join his pro-sodomy and gay-marriage opinions.

In 1996, Dole likely would have won almost all of the 1996 Perot voters (almost all of whom had voted GOP in 1994 and would vote GOP in 1996 congressional elections) that didn’t decide to stay at home if Perot dropped out. Dole almost certainly would have picked up KY, TN, FL, NV, AZ, MO and OH to reach 247 EVs, which would be close but no cigar. As Impy mentioned, Dole’s only hope of victory would have been to carry PA, which voted Clinton 49.17%, Dole 39.97% and Perot 9.56%. Dole would have to net over 96% of the Perot vote in PA to carry the state, which would be a bridge too far. Of course, had Perot dropped out early or not run at all in 1996, the presidential campaign would have been different and maybe Dole would have gotten higher turnout in GOP areas or held on to more voters in the Philly suburbs, so we can’t know for sure how the election would have turned out. But if I had to bet, my money would be on a narrow Clinton victory in PA to clinch his reelection.