1992

[dazzleman]

I really don't think that Ross Perot would have carried any states, even if he hadn't dropped out and returned to the race in 1992.

US politics is generally geared in the direction of realism, and I think his support would have fallen away in any case as the election approached, because people would think that a vote for him was wasted since he couldn't win.

That was a strange election year, marked by an incumbent who had run out of ideas and seemed like a deer in the headlights, and a Democratic challenger of highly dubious character and integrity.  So for a lot of people (including me), these were not attractive choices, but I still don't believe that Ross Perot could have won a whole slew of states as some people have suggested.  At most, he might have won around 3 states out west, like Montana, with Clinton still winning the election overall.

But that's just my opinion.  We'll never know for sure.

[dazzleman]

"some people" would be me, right? But I'm not arguing that. If you look at my numbers they don't indicate that Perot would have been successfull. I had to give him 14% before anything serious started to happen, and even so, he didn't impact the actual outcome. He finished third everywhere except Maine, where he beat Bush by the smallest of margins.

He may have beaten Bush by the closest of margins in Maine, but Clinton still carried the state.  So a stronger showing by Perot would only have meant that Bush still lost the state, only by a wider margin.

I looked at the election results from that year, and I didn't see a single state carried by Bush in which Perot was close to Bush in total votes.  So I don't think that Bush would have faced a Taft-style humiliation, even if Perot had stuck it out in the race and not made the crazy comments that he did.