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Dude, you're not getting my Bud Chiles vote
By John A. Tures
Associate Professor of Political Science
LaGrange College
September 1, 2010 — Remember those Bud Light ads from the 1990s, where some guy hugs his buddy and says “I love you, man!” The skeptical friend replies “Dude…you’re not getting my Bud Light!” Right now, Republican businessman Rick Scott and State Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink are doing their best to woo Bud Chiles voters as rumors swirl about his departure. Who will win? Let’s look at a historical case to see what happens when independents drop out. In 1992, America faced its last three-way electoral race, when businessman H. Ross Perot took on President George H. W. Bush and Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, a Democrat. To this day, conservatives will swear to you that Perot split the Republican votes, handing the election to Clinton, who took the popular vote with 43% of the total. But the trend lines tell a different tale.
During the 1992 primary season, Clinton emerged victorious, but bloodied, with only a quarter of the voters giving him a favorable rating. Perot jumped in and Clinton fell to third. But after a nasty spat between the front-runners and a smartly run political convention by the Clinton campaign, Perot dropped out. Clinton soared to a huge lead, benefitting from Perot’s exit and voter disapproval with the economy.
A few months later, Perot jumped back into the race and Clinton’s huge lead dwindled. The anti-incumbent vote was split. Nevertheless, Clinton held onto his small lead with a good performance in the debates. Though his margin of victory was small in the popular vote, he won by more than a 2:1 margin in the Electoral College. While Perot’s entry may have cost Bush the state of Montana, it helped the President win Florida. Every subsequent analysis still shows Clinton would have won the Electoral College; both parties simply differ over the margin of victory (Clinton voters focus on 1992 poll trends and the downticket race vote, while Republicans compare 1988 numbers with 1992 results). There’s a similar debate about what happens in the Florida Governor’s race if independent candidate Bud Chiles drops out. With numbers as high as 16% of the vote in some surveys, his supporters could well mean the difference in a tight race.
Democrats think the Chiles move will help them. The governor’s mansion is in Republican hands (Crist) and Chiles will no longer split the vote among those dissatisfied with the politics of Tallahassee. But that was before Scott upset Attorney General Bill McCollum. Scott, after all, is more of a political outsider than McCollum or Sink herself. Then again, Chiles’ father, Lawton, was a Democratic Party fixture. So Chiles likely drew his support from the Democratic voters, instead of Republicans. His exit should boost Sink’s chances, then, one might suspect. Then again, Chiles didn’t campaign as a traditional Democrat, right? If that were the case, he would have run against Sink in the primary. Sink might benefit from the trend lines, which showed her with a consistent amount of support, but trailing McCollum and Scott in head-to-head matches over the summer. As the GOP race got nastier, Sink rose, while the two Republicans experienced declines in their numbers. Scott has rebounded somewhat after his victory, but appears to be trailing Sink. This, of course, depends on which poll you choose. Rasmussen favors Republicans, while PPP favors Democrats, but this is what you tend to find from these two polling agencies. In conclusion, it’s best not to make dismissive assumptions about independent voters, and who they “belong” to. Democrats miscalculated, figuring Perot would only be a second Bush-basher, while Republicans assumed Perot voters were closet Bush supporter. As a result, neither side did a good job of forecasting the 1992 outcome. Scott and Sink cannot afford to make similar mistakes. |
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