"G.R. Patterson III" wrote in message
...
I recall the media (paper and radio) in this area claiming that
Bush, Sr. would almost certainly have won if Perot had not been
running. NPR in particular assumed that most of the people who
voted for Perot would have voted Republican had Perot dropped out.

Well, they were wrong.

Here's a sample article describing the election outcome:
http://www.fairvote.org/plurality/perot.htm

A relevant quote:
"Exit polls showed that Perot's voters apparently split their preferences
between Clinton and Bush nearly equally, although approximately a third of
them likely would not have voted without him on the ballot."

I don't know what would make NPR make an assumption such as you claim, but
even if you can document their assumption, I'll take exit poll data over an
NPR quote any day.

The article does go on to say that Perot probably hurt Bush more than
Clinton, but not because all the Perot votes would have voted for Bush, and
not in a way that actually affected the end result of the election.

Pete