1992 was not a realignment election. The elections we have had since 2008, and continued white flight into the GOP have made most of the states in the South won by Bill Clinton off-limits to Democrats.
1992 was the beginning of a realignment that was confirmed in 2000. It was the removal of all of New England, all of the Middle Atlantic states, the industrial Midwestern states of IL and Mi, and the exodus of CA from the GOP ranks to the Democratic ranks.
These are states that would have gone for Clinton even if Perot had not been on the ballot. These regions were put off by the shift of the GOP toward the Evangelical Right, a movement away from the GOP that was exacerbated by Pat Buchanan's "Culture War" speech at the 1992 Democratic National Convention. This movement had been going on since the late 1980s, but Buchanan's clarion call brought the issue out into the open. This realignment was a counterpoint to the departure from the Democratic Party of Evangelicals and of couservative Catholics.
After the election, Bush 41's Labor Secretary, Lynn Martin, a moderate, pro-choice Republican lashed back at the Religious Right, blaming them for Bush's loss. "It's not enough that we're your political party; now we're going to be your church as well?" stated Martin during a moment of post-election recriminations. What Martin couldn't see is that no Republican could be nominated for the Presidency anymore without first making a Faustian bargain with the Movement Conservatives that dominated the GOP nomination process, and Evangelicals were/are a HUGE part of this movement. And given that America's religious mores were, as a whole, more conservative in 1988 than today, the pull of the Evangelical Right was that much stronger. The "Culture War" speech was often cited as something that cost Bush 41 a number of states, but it may well have earned him NC, FL, VA, and almost earned him GA.
