[Catmom]

Actually several historians now believe Bush would still have lost in ‘92 even without Perot.

It’s hard to remove an incumbent president. Bush 41 simply screwed up.

[Verginius Rufus]

I haven't made a detailed study of the question but I agree that it is likely Bush would have lost even if Perot had not been in the race--but it is hard to be sure of the dynamics of the race if he had not had two people beating up on him.

One good thing about President Bush's sky-high popularity after the Gulf War was that Thurgood Marshall evidently thought that Bush was sure to be re-elected, so he retired from the Supreme Court and Bush was able to pick Clarence Thomas to replace him. If Marshall had stayed on the Court until his death, Clinton would have picked his replacement.

Bush's popularity after the Gulf War may have scared some prominent Democrats out of running, letting Clinton get the nomination.

[Republican Wildcat]

Though it is purely an academic argument we can never really know...the Perot voters could be polled about who they supposedly ‘would’ have voted for had Perot not been in the race, but even they don’t know that because the campaign without him in the race and it just being Bush and Clinton responding and engaging with each other was never waged to affect their thought processes when election day came around.