chanan’s 18 at the Republican National Convention
in Houston, Texas, the openly conservative tone of
the party platform and the president’s acceptance
speech turned much of Bush’s moderate support
away. Dan Quayle was renominated for the vice pres-
idential slot.
For a long time, Texas businessman H. Ross Perot
had been expressing concern over the rising federal
budget deficit. After hinting for a long period of
time that he would run for the presidency as an inde-
pendent, he announced his candidacy and that, with
his billions, he would finance his own campaign. Af-
ter he entered the race, the polls had Perot as a 39
percent preference—higher than Clinton and Bush.
Then, for reasons that have never quite been ex-
plained, he abruptly dropped out of the race on July
16, 1992, only to resurface on October 1. However,
his momentum had been irreparably set back.
Early into the campaign, it became evident that
Bush was fighting an uphill battle. Unease and eco-
nomic discontent eroded his support, and the
Clinton camp was quick to capitalize on the prevail-
ing sentiment. “It’s the economy, stupid” became
the campaign’s catchphrase. Clinton’s pledges for
national health insurance and revival of the jobs
market helped boost him in the polls. The one
chance the Republicans had to regain the initiative
perhaps laid in scoring points on national television
during a series of four televised debates in October.
The debates were disastrous for the Republicans.
Bush was perceived as nervous, his attacks on
Clinton’s character and patriotism for his part in
anti-Vietnam War demonstrations were not well re-
ceived by the viewers, and Clinton was generally con-
ceded to have done best of the three candidates.
Perot was polled as having performed best in the
first debate but thereafter went into decline.
Election Results As expected, Clinton won the
presidency: He did so with 370 electoral votes to 168
for Bush. The popular vote tallied at 44,909,806
for Clinton, 39,104,550 for Bush, and 19,743,821
for Perot. Perot’s total equaled 18.9 percent of the
popular vote and made the Texan the most success-
ful third-party candidate since Theodore Roose-
velt’s Progressive (“Bullmoose”) Party campaign of
1912.
In the congressional elections, Clinton’s coattails
did not prove to be very effective; the Democratic
Party lost nine seats in the House of Representatives
but maintained a majority. The Senate saw no
strengthening of the Democratic majority there. No-
table casualties were Democrat Terry Sanford of
North Carolina, Republican John Seymour of Cali-
fornia, Republican Bob Kasten of Wisconsin, and
Democrat Wyche Fowler, Jr., of Georgia. The elec-
tions brought an unprecedented twenty-four new
women to the House and four new women to the
Senate, marking 1992 as the “Year of the Woman.”
Impact The 1992 election in effect marked the end
of the vestiges of the twelve-year-old conservative Re-
publican “Reagan Revolution” and the advent on
the national scene of the new president, who was to
become one of the most dominant and controversial
political figures of the 1990’s. In another sense, it
marked the passing of an era: George H. W. Bush wasThe Nineties in America Elections in the United States, 1992 301
Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton, top, and indepen-
dent candidate H. Ross Perot, center, respond to Republican can-
didate George H. W. Bush during the second presidential debate
at the University of Richmond, Virginia, on October 15, 1992.
(AP/Wide World Photos)