I think you are ignoring the reality that Perot was a conservative.
He was a Texas business entrepreneur. He thought Bush to be overly cooperative with the political establishment. That is a proto Trump candidate.
he did not evenly split the vote. Perot voters would have voted Republican but decided to try for a third party.
CPD is a massive control. The debates are watched by 50-100 million people. It was a huge factor.
But was he really? Like somebody else up thread said his family had ties to the dems. Sure he talked about balancing the budget, but that was the hot talking point that election. Everybody talked about it. Of course it’s not like Bush was terribly conservative either.
He didn’t evenly split the vote. The question is who would the mushy middle that voted for him voted for without him? The numbers and history tell me that they would have broken heavily for the not incumbent. And another big chunk probably would have just not voted.
I believe in well established historical trends. And the well established historical trend is that Bush was gonna lose. The sun rose in the east and the VP who rode coattails and then proved to not be him lost. That’s how things work.
Debates are generally bad for whoever is leading. That’s why candidates with strong leads try to avoid them. Since Clinton was leading the whole way if being on the debate floor helped Perot at all (hard for me to believe, he sucked at the debates, but it could happen) he pulled from Clinton. Again, well established historical trend.