1992 United States presidential election  

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The 1992 United States presidential election was the 52nd quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 3, 1992. Democratic Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas defeated incumbent Republican President George H. W. Bush, independent businessman Ross Perot of Texas, and a number of minor candidates.

Bush had alienated many of the conservatives in his party by breaking his 1988 campaign pledge against raising taxes, but he fended off a primary challenge from conservative commentator Pat Buchanan. Bush's popularity after his success in the Gulf War dissuaded high-profile Democratic candidates like Mario Cuomo from entering the 1992 Democratic primaries. Clinton, a leader of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, established himself as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination by sweeping the Super Tuesday primaries. He defeated former and future Governor of California Jerry Brown, former Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas, and other candidates to win his party's nomination, and chose Senator Al Gore as his running mate. Billionaire Ross Perot launched an independent campaign, emphasizing his opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement and his plan to reduce the national debt.

The economy was in recession and Bush's greatest strength, foreign policy, was regarded as much less important following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War and the relatively peaceful climate in the Middle East after the Gulf War. Perot led in several polls taken in June 1992 but severely damaged his candidacy by temporarily dropping out of the race in July. The Bush campaign criticized Clinton's character and emphasized Bush's foreign policy successes, while Clinton focused on the economy.

Clinton won a plurality in the popular vote and a majority of the electoral vote, breaking a streak of three straight Republican victories. He won states in every region of the country. Clinton swept the Northeast and the West Coast, marking the start of Democratic dominance in both regions in both presidential and statewide elections. Clinton also performed well in the eastern Midwest, the Mountain West, Appalachia, and parts of the South. As of 2020, this is the last time a candidate won an election without winning the battleground state of Florida, as Clinton went on to carry Florida when he won reelection in 1996. This was also the last time that the states of Montana and Georgia voted Democratic in a presidential election.

Along with Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, Bush is one of three incumbent presidents since World War II to be defeated in the general election. Perot won 18.9% of the popular vote, the highest share of the vote won by a candidate outside of the two major parties since 1912. This was the first election since 1976 in which a sitting Republican president failed to secure a second term. Although he failed to win any electoral votes, Perot found support in every state, and Clinton's home state of Arkansas was the lone state to give a majority of its vote to any candidate.



Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "1992 United States presidential election" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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