2000: Perot runs again

[Sir Mohamed]

If Ross Perot ran for a final 3rd time in 2000, how would that have impacted the election? Does this give Al Gore the EC win?

[Left Wing]

Gore probably wins. Perot took away voters from both sides, but slightly more from Republicans. Perot hits 5% of the vote again, meaning the 2004 Reform nominee gets access to federal funds. I could see someone more high-profile being the Reform nominee that year.

[VPH]

Likely ends up winning between 5-10%, but there were many obstacles.

By 2000, the Reform Party was torn in a billion ways. The fault lines had already come into sight in 1996 when Lamm challenged Perot. In 2000, Russ Verney, the outgoing chair, got pissed at Ventura for his Playboy interview. Ventura was aligned with Trump. 1996 campaign VP (and nationalist economist) Pat Choate teamed up with socialist Lenora Fulani and Bay Buchanan to get Pat Buchanan to run on a right-wing populist platform. Both sides hated each other. Oh, and then there was transcendental meditationist John Hagelin.

It was an absolute mess by 2000 because the party became a pit full of strange ideological bedfellows all broadly against globalization. Lots of egos in the same party with different visions. So if Perot could've somehow cut through the mess, he likely would do better than Buchanan. Buchanan, after all, polled pretty high through parts of the cycle but faded quickly when it came to the actual vote. Perot, while controversial, didn't have the crazy level of baggage Buchanan did. A book Pitchfork Pat released not long before 2000 questioned Holocaust and Nazi history. Perot was much less extreme than Buchanan. If he picked an exciting VP (which didn't happen in 1996 despite him asking Kaptur and David Boren), Perot might be able to pick off some McCain primary supporters. Some people talked about Bill Bradley as the 1996 candidate, so maybe Perot could reach some of his voters too (https://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/news/9605/31/perot.morton/index.shtml).

[KaiserDave]

Carries ~6% of the vote, and delivers the election narrowly to Gore.

[President Johnson]

✓ Vice President Albert Arnold Gore (D-TN)/Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT): 317 EV. (47.23%)
Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)/Former Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney (R-WY): 221 EV. (45.55%)
Businessman H. Ross Perot (I-TX)/Governor Jesse Ventura (I-MN): 0 EV. (6.14%)

[brucejoel99]

I imagine he'd pull enough votes away from W. to allow Gore to win. Having racked up 483,000 votes in FL in 1996, he'd only need to pull 537 away from W. to give the state (&, thus, the Presidency) to Gore, which seems very plausible (if not likely).

[MIKESOWELL]

Gore would pick up Florida, New Hampshire, and possibly Ohio and Tennessee in this scenario.

[NewYorkExpress]

Perot takes somewhere between 7-9%, which is enough to flip Florida, Ohio and New Hampshire from Bush to Gore.

Tennessee is the closest state in the Nation, with Bush winning by a couple hundred votes.

[Alben Barkley]

For the last time, Perot took more votes from Clinton than Bush. Perhaps in 2000, under different circumstances with different candidates, this wouldn’t be the case anymore. But if your argument rests on the myth that Perot cost Bush the election, or even just took more votes from him, it’s wrong.

I can just as easily see a scenario here in which Gore loses by more as one in which he wins.

[Chips]

Honestly, Who knows? It's always been rather inconclusive as to whether Perot took more from Clinton, Bush/Dole or took votes from both about evenly in the actual 1992 and 1996 elections.

It's entirely plausible that Perot causes the election to swing to Gore...



But Perot running could've just as easily swung things further in Bush's direction...



Or, we could've even had the exact same map...