That's known by someone as news & politically savvy as yourself, but the "average" voter in 1992 (without the Internet, without social media & w/o even Fox News), that really wasn't how they saw it because ABC/CBS/NBC/WaPo/NYT told them so...coupled with his broken "no new taxes" pledge, he took the hit on the economy. Had nothing to do with Perot.
As pointed out in those articles, the two largest states where Perot did best (TX & FL), Bush still took those Electoral College Votes.
The known data, for better or worse, just doesn't support the idea that Perot cost Bush Sr. re-election.
Bush Sr’s arrogance was a major turnoff, too. Having prevailed against Iraq, Bush’s popularity numbers shot up to record territory, such that he took his re-election to be a given. He made Schultz (?) his campaign manager after Schultz told him he didn’t want it. Schultz proceeded to run a re-election campaign that reflected Bush’s smugness.
His broken promise on taxes plus the L-shaped recovery cost him the election.
I can see some reasoning behind your comments, but I still don’t agree.
Thanks for the comments.