A reader's correction to October 19 2005 post

A reader takes me to task for (below) October 19 post mentioning Clinton and Perot in '92. 

You say that under preferential voting Bush (Snr) probably would have won in 
1992. This is a version of the "Bush only lost because Perot split the vote" 
claim popular amongst conservatives. It's rubbish ....

On a national level the 1992 figures were Clinton 43.3, Bush 37.6, Perot 
18.7.

Consequently, under compulsory preferential Bush would have needed 2/3s of 
Perot's vote to win 50% nationally. There's no evidence that he would have 
got this. The exit polling data I saw asked voters who they would have voted 
for if Perot had not run. His voters split almost exactly 40% to Clinton, 
40% to Bush, 20% said they would not have voted, or voted for some fringe 
candidate. There were some regional variations in this - Texas Perot voters 
were more likely to go for Bush, Ohians for Clinton, but it seemed to hold 
up pretty well.

There may have been other polls showing a slight leaning to Bush, but 
certainly nothing like 66%. If you allow for people staying home, or not 
preferencing under optional preferential, Bush would have needed an even 
larger percentage of those who did choose between the big two.

Of course US elections are decided by the electoral college, not the popular 
vote, but states where Clinton would have needed even less than 1/3 of 
Perot's preferences in a preferential ballot had 271 delegates, so if the 
preference flow was consistent probably 25% flow would have done it for 
Clinton.

The basis for the claim about Perot hurting Bush seems to be that Perot was 
a right-winger and therefore would have appealled to Bush leaning voters. 
This is wrong for two reasons. Firstly, Perot's campaign was quite 
politically mixed - his opposition to corporations using free trade 
agreements to undermine unions could hardly be considered a right-wing 
position. On top of this much of his appeal was to the people who were 
dissatisfied with politic in general, and most likely to vote against the
incumbant.