WI: George H.W. Bush wins re-election in 1992

This is much easier accomplished than I thought it would be.

All you have to do is have Perot finish the race a bit stronger, taking voters away from Clinton and causing the national popular vote to be tied between Bush and Clinton.

In OTL, Clinton won the national popular vote with 43 percent. Bush came in second with 37 percent, and Perot followed with 19 percent.

If you take 6 percent of the voting populace, spread uniformly throughout each state, and move that 6 percent to Perot's column, the final result is Bush 37, Clinton 37, and Perot 25. Moreover, the Electoral College ends up going for Bush by a hair. Here's how that uniform 6 percent transfer of votes would change the electoral map in 1992:

West: MT, CO, and NV flip for Bush
South: KY, TN, GA, and LA go for Bush
Midwest: WI and OH go for Bush
Northeast: NJ and NH go for Bush; ME goes for Perot

The end result is Bush 275, Clinton 259, Perot 4 in the Electoral College

12 states change hands with this kind of vote transfer (6 percent of all voters switch from Clinton to Perot).

This scenario is not unthinkable because Perot was riding high before he dropped out of the race in mid-1992 and might have finished more strongly had he never dropped out in the first place. Also, I'm fairly certain that Bush had hit his floor with 37 percent of the vote, but Clinton had not.

So what happens next?

1993-94 - No Gingrich Revolution. Democrats make gains in the 1994 midterms. Bush is a lame duck POTUS. Similar to the UK during this same era, everyone is waiting for a Tony Blair. George W. Bush loses to Ann Richards in the Texas governor's race.

1995-96 - The New Economy doesn't help the Republicans, who realize that they are about to go down big time in 1996. Bob Dole still wins the nod for the GOP despite a strong run by VP Quayle. Gore wins the Democratic nod as the junior member of the 1992 ticket --- the first Democratic ticket to hold the Republicans under 300 electoral votes since 1976. Gore trounces Dole in the fall and is seen as the American version of Tony Blair when Blair brings Labour back to power in 1997.

1997-2000 - Gore runs an Administration known for its ethics and is scandal-free for his first term. Gore takes credit for inventing the Internet and is seen as the political wunderkind of the new economy. Republicans make normal midterm gains in 1998 but still fail to take back Congress. Gore works more effectively with a Democratic Congress than did Clinton during his first two years, but Dems in Congress still overreach and 1998 is a pretty solid Republican year as far as midterms go. Gore rides the economy to re-election in 2000.

2001-2004 - 9/11 still takes place. Gore's response is regime change in Afghanistan and to otherwise treat the act as security issue, not an issue that requires use of the military beyond that. Americans are hungry for a stronger response, and Rudy Giuliani tops the polls of possible Republican nominees in 2004. Dems lose both houses of Congress in 2002 after the faltering economy plus 9/11 call into question Gore's continued prowess. Giuliani mounts a campaign as the anti-Gore and is brash and bellicose, winning over Republican primary voters.

2004 election - Gore is term-limited, so Giuliani would take on the Democratic nominee, likely Gore's two-term veep. Whomever Gore chose as veep in 1996 is likely to go down to the post-911 Giuliani in a 2004 election cycle in which voters want change. Obama still gives the keynote at the 2004 Democratic convention and still wins in Illinois that year.

2005-2008 - Giuliani, leading the first Republican Administration since George H.W. Bush, probably overreaches in all the wrong ways and creates more problems for himself with his personality, similar to Trump. Obama may not be butterflied away and may still become POTUS in 2008. Trump is probably butterflied away due to Giuliani filling the appetite for an irreverent New Yorker several years earlier.

Biggest changes - Republicans take Congress at a much later time, no Clinton scandals, no second war in Iraq, no 2000 election (as we know it), Clinton never brings Southerners back into the Democratic Party for awhile (Gore was much less of a Southern candidate), no GWB, and everyone forgets Hillary Clinton by 1993.
 

SsgtC

Banned
One problem. If Perot finishes stronger, Bush finishes worse. Perot is going to pull FAR more voters from Bush than he is from Clinton.
 
All in all, it's not a completely unlikely scenario to me. But the one major problem is what @SsgtC pointed out - how does Perot manage to take more votes from Clinton than he does from Bush? If anything, I think Bush is more likely to suffer from the prolonged Republican control of the White House (almost 16 years is a long time for one party to control the WH), and that demand for change will hurt him more than it does Clinton. Maybe if there were a bigger scandal that came out about Bill Clinton during the election cycle, and Perot never dropped out as suggested, he could ride the mantle of the best, purest hope for change, and finish stronger than he did IOTL, siphoning off a bigger number of voters from Clinton. But IMO, at the end of the day, Bush is likely to suffer more from a Perot insurgency.
 
Those are fair questions upthread. In some ways it's more likely that a stronger Perot would continue to take from both candidates, but I don't think it's completely unreasonable to think that Bush had hit his floor. Note that in late September of 1992, a Pew Poll showed Clinton at 53% and Bush at 38% of the national vote, with 9% for an independent candidate:

http://www.people-press.org/1992/09/17/clinton-maintains-lead-as-bush-campaign-struggles/

Perot was out of the race at the time, but 9% of the electorate was still planning to vote for him apparently, and his name was still on the ballot in all 50 states.

By Election Day, Perot had re-entered the race, and his support had grown to 19% (+10), while Clinton finished with 43% (-10) and Bush with 37% (-1).

So while Perot may have initially poisoned the well for Bush early in the campaign, by causing tons of his 1988 voters to abandon him in droves, by Fall of 1992, it may have been that Bush's remaining voters were baked in, and voters who had already decided not to vote for Bush were left choosing between Clinton and Perot.
 

SsgtC

Banned
So while Perot may have initially poisoned the well for Bush early in the campaign, by causing tons of his 1988 voters to abandon him in droves, by Fall of 1992, it may have been that Bush's remaining voters were baked in, and voters who had already decided not to vote for Bush were left choosing between Clinton and Perot.
While that is possible, I also think a lot of people voted for Bush over Perot because he dropped out and didn't seem to be truly committed to being President. Not exactly a trait you want in a Commander in Chief. If Perot stays in the race, he shows a lot more commitment to becoming President and is seen as a more viable option by Bush voters.
 

Edward IX

Banned
I have always been a bit embarrassed but I cast my vote for Perot in 1992, when I should have voted for Bush. I know there have been numerous studies saying Perot took from Bush and Clinton equally, and I will never, ever believe it. I am convinced Perot cost Bush that election. I voted for Perot by the way because of his stance on the debt, which is still a prime concern for me. I was in the military and a veteran of Desert Shield and Desert storm, it caused me to become a fairly isolationist in my views, which persists, and of course later events confirmed my beliefs.

Your problem with Rudy is this: he is a pretty liberal Republican. His views are way outside of the base who vote in the primaries. When you add the pictures of him in drag and he is not getting nominated. America's Mayor of New York City is one thing, the National nominee? I think not.
 
Honestly, I'm not convinced the 1994 "Revolution" wouldn't occur at least in some form even with a second term for Bush as a lot of the GOP gains were due to congressional elections finally catching up with Presidential (Local continued to lag somewhat until the early 2000s) voting patterns; in effect, it was a matter of demographics. Another angle to it is that news media was finally getting to the point, through mediums like talk radio, that Southern Democrats couldn't "Talk Conservative, vote Liberal" like they used to it and so were being held to account by Southern voters.
 
Honestly, I'm not convinced the 1994 "Revolution" wouldn't occur at least in some form even with a second term for Bush as a lot of the GOP gains were due to congressional elections finally catching up with Presidential (Local continued to lag somewhat until the early 2000s) voting patterns; in effect, it was a matter of demographics. Another angle to it is that news media was finally getting to the point, through mediums like talk radio, that Southern Democrats couldn't "Talk Conservative, vote Liberal" like they used to it and so were being held to account by Southern voters.

Seconded. We can also add that there were a lot of Southern Democratic retirement in 1994. A lot of dixiecrats just aged out of office.

George W Bush said in one of his memoirs that he wouldn't have run in 1994 if his father had been reelected however. Some other Republican could conceivably defeat Richards.



My question is, if the GOP makes gains in 1994 in the House and Senate, the economy takes off in the mid-90s as is did historically, and HW leaves office with 55-60% in approvals, why should the GOP go into 1996 expecting a loss the way they did historically?

Considering how weak a campaigner he was, I could see Gore losing to an energetic and unorthodox Republican like Jack Kemp.
 
My question is, if the GOP makes gains in 1994 in the House and Senate, the economy takes off in the mid-90s as is did historically, and HW leaves office with 55-60% in approvals, why should the GOP go into 1996 expecting a loss the way they did historically?

Considering how weak a campaigner he was, I could see Gore losing to an energetic and unorthodox Republican like Jack Kemp.

I guess I just see a 1996 race in this scenario more like 1952 --- where the economy is a positive for the party in power but there's such an appetite for turnover that it doesn't matter.

Kemp seemed a bit old by 1996. That said, I think that both parties might have seen vibrant primaries if each side thought that it had a chance at victory.

The OTL primary field for Republicans was not the best. Not sure who would run in an ATL where Republicans felt there was a 50/50 chance of holding the WH.

It's also possible that Gore would have fallen to another moderate Democrat, maybe from outside the South. Not sure who would fit the young and neoliberal model other than he and Clinton.
 
I guess I just see a 1996 race in this scenario more like 1952 --- where the economy is a positive for the party in power but there's such an appetite for turnover that it doesn't matter.

Largely due to Korea, which had turned into a rather bloody stalemate by that point. Unless something major happens during the Bush second term, I just don't see the same situation occurring.

The OTL primary field for Republicans was not the best. Not sure who would run in an ATL where Republicans felt there was a 50/50 chance of holding the WH.

A lot of the reason the field got cleared for Dole was because, at the heart of the matter, no one really expected Clinton to lose. A 1996 that looks a lot better would most likely see a lot of big names throw their hat into the ring, I'd expect.
 
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There's also the question of how a two different foreign policies under two different administration's still leads to 9/11
 

SsgtC

Banned
There's also the question of how a two different foreign policies under two different administration's still leads to 9/11
Because as long as the US still has troops in Saudi Arabia, Bin Laden would carry out the attack.
 
If Gore is elected, would he have implemented strong environmental legislation (CAFE standards, carbon tax, etc.) while in office?
 
The best way for Bush to win in 92 is to have Perot not run Third Party in the First Place and thus have the media focus on Bill Clinton's sex scandals coming out of Arkansas. The Dems had a image problem as they kept losing elections since the 80s and got lucky with Bill. Clinton losing to Bush will add gas to the fire of the Dems weakness and will enforce the Reagan Revolution.

As for Bush's second term, he do pretty good at least in foreign policy. No Don't ask, Don't Tell. Bush could bomb North Korea and set back their nuclear program by several years, if not more. Somalia can go much better and this allow could stop Islamists, or delay attacks, and bombing on the US, as they switch to other states. We go head first into Rwanda and the Balkans to stop the genocide. Russia will have a better time Post-Soviet Union and Bush Senior will deal with the restructuring of the various republics a lot better.

As for 1996, not sure about Gore winning. (He can, but still.) You have a ton of others. Paul Tsongas, Jerry Brown, Bob Kerrey, Tom Harkin, Lloyd Bentsen, Sam Nunn, maybe Zell Miller and Barbara Mikulski. (Note that Tsongas has his non-Hodgkins lymphoma and in OTL died in January 1997, Nunn and Miller might be too conservative for the Democrats to accept.)

As for 2000....Bill Clinton anyone? (He still be a popular, charismatic politician and former Governor.)
 
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