Three's a Crowd: The Dynamic of Third Parties, Ross Perot, and Republican Resurgence

9. The Mobilization Effects of Perot Activity

IX The Mobilization Effects ifPerot Activity mp ELECTORAL RETURNS SINCE 1994 demonstrate a link between the 1992 Perot vote and the subsequent strength and success of Republican candidates. Our argument is that in response to a bid made by the Republican Party, significant numbers of Perot supporters switched their votes to Republican candidates in 1994 and in the ensuing elections. Furthermore, to account for the gain in Republican fortunes, the movement of 1992 Perot supporters in subsequent elections cannot simply be a matter of coming home to the Republican Party after defecting to Perot in 1992. While the evidence in chapter 8 supports our claim that the Republicans captured former Perot backers' support, it does not address directly what individual Perot supporters did after the 1992 election . The connections we have shown between Perot support and Republican fortunes probably resulted from individual Perot voters changing their behavior after the 1992 election, but because we have so far not tracked individuals' behaviors after 1992, we cannot be absolutely certain that the changes resulted from the processes we describe. Linking the aggregate patterns of the previous chapter to individual behavior is the topic of this chapter. Unfortunately, no survey of the American dectorate gives us sufficiently large numbers of Perot voters over an extended period of time to enable us to follow them through the elections after 1992. Accordingly , we turn to our sample of potential Perot activists, both because the data are available in appropriate detail and over a sufficiently long period 100 The Mobilization Effects qfPerot Activity 191 of time to test our expectations and because we expect that changes among activists stimulate change among less active supporters in the electorate as a whole. Certainly our analysis in chapter 8 shows that significant change occurred in the electorate after the 1992 election; in this chapter, we demonstrate that individual Perot supporters changed their behavior consistent with the dynamic of third parties. SPILLOVER EFFECTS OF CAMPAIGN ACTIVISM In chapter 2, we summarized research on activism in the presidential nomination process and found spillover effects from the nomination to the general election stage of the process.These effects demonstrate that mobilization by one campaign can stimulate enhanced involvement in a subsequent campaign. This occurs between the nomination and the general election stages of presidential campaigns, when nomination activists are disproportionately mobilized into a fall general election campaign by their participation in a nomination candidate's effort in the previous spring. In this way, the nomination campaign stimulates future activity, most remarkably among supporters oflosing candidates in nomination contests (McCann et al. 1996; Stone, Atkeson, and Rapoport 1992). We expect similar spillover effects between Perot's 1992 campaign and subsequent major-party campaigns if the major-party bid for Perot activists was successful.We saw in chapter 7 that the more engaged activists were in Perot's 1992 campaign, the more likely they were to be contacted directly by Republican campaigns in 1994. This heightened level of contact reflects the bid the Republicans made for Perot activists' support in 1994. Campaign involvement for Perot in 1992 sensitized activists to the stake they had in political outcomes and increased their awareness of political stimuli, including the Republican bid made on the basis of the core issues that attracted them to Ross Perot in the first place.Thus, we expect to find that mobilization into Perot's 1992 campaign produced spillover into Republican campaigns in 1994 and beyond. Because we have a panel survey ofpotential Perot activists that follows 192 THREE'S A CROWD the same individuals after the 1992 election, we can test for spillover effects . We can also test for the conditional nature of these effect~, consistent with our argument. In particular, based on the bid the Republican Party made for the Perot constituency, we expect to find spillover into Republican campaigns. Moreover, in 1994, which was the critical election for establishing the Republican Party's parity with the Democratic Party, we anticipate that spillover effects were conditioned on direct contact from Republican campaigns. Spillover effects into Republican campaigns among Perot activists would strengthen our claims about how the dynamic of third parties applies to the aftermath of Perot's 1992 campaign, since such effects would indicate that core members of Perot's constituency moved into the Republican Party. Indeed, if the spillover hypothesis holds, those most involved for Perot should have become most engaged in Republican campaigns . It also provides...