Quote from Pabst:
Few in political science lend credence to those 1992 exit polls. Exit polling has been a notoriously poor barometer of sentiment. I have no theory as to why that's been true. Perhaps too small a sample of data. I've run for elective office 5 times in my life (2-3) and as an elected Committeeman I visit around 50-70 polling places each election day. (Yes it takes HOURS). Yet, I've NEVER seen exit polling being performed.
All one need do (as I've done) is look at Bush-Dukakis, Kemp-Clinton and Bush/Clinton/Perot on a county by county basis. It's obvious that MANY more Perot voters were former Republican's. One can also use logic to "backdoor" the results. Generally the states that Perot did the worst were the states Bush did the best. NY being the most notable exception. But does ANYONE believe Clinton would have won, Montana without Perot on the ballot? It's those HARDCORE fiscal conservatives who made up Perot's base. Do you belive any more than a third of Perot voters were of the mindset, "well I wanted to vote for that higher taxes, national health care, gays in military fellow but I think I'll go with Perot."
Bush Senior's job approval numbers were in the low 30s in 1992, even his base abandoned him. Regardless of the exit polls (which were actually extremely accurate in 1992) why is it so hard to imagine that a president whose job approval rating is around 30% loses his reelection campaign. Especially given the fact that he was running against a highly intelligent, energetic, charismatic, southern, sentrist governor.
