(3 of 4)
Worse still for them is that the President shows strength in almost every part of the country. It may not be surprising that he's a winner in the Northeast (Clinton, 57%, to Dole, 37%). When they're cornered, that's one segment of the map the Democrats can count on. But Clinton also runs even with or ahead of Dole in the South. In Dole's own Midwest, it's Clinton, 45%, Dole, 47%. And in the Western Pacific states, including the 54-electoral-vote bonanza of California, Clinton is favored over Dole by a decisive 52% to 38%. Dole's clearest advantage is in the Western Mountain states, where he leads Clinton 49% to 37%. Together they have just 40 electoral votes.
Clinton's support is made up of three legs: older voters, women and African Americans. Though Dole is one of their own generation, seniors, the people most concerned about Medicare, tilt strongly to Clinton. So do women, who favor him over Dole, 53% to 37%. Dole wins the men by a smaller margin, 48% to 43%. With Powell gone, African Americans flip overwhelmingly back to Clinton.
Both parties still have to satisfy the voter whose main problem is the culture of Washington. George Cronk, 66, a retired autoworker now living in Ashley Falls, Massachusetts, voted for Clinton in '92 but went Republican last year. Now he tells the TIME/CNN pollsters he's headed back to the Democrats. "The Republicans made a lot of big promises,'' he says. "Once they got into power, they seemed to change. Term limits went out the door. They became what they replaced.'' Cronk was never a Perot voter, but he voices the big complaint of Perot's followers. For them, Republicans have not gone far enough on term limits and campaign-finance reform. Then again, neither has Clinton, so his support among those voters will be soft. In the Election Monitor, 20% of voters say they still support Perot, which is close to the 19% of the vote he got in 1992.
And for Perot too, the Powell withdrawal was a godsend. The general had already ruled out a run under the banner of Perot's new third party. Had he run instead as an unorthodox Republican, Powell the nonpolitician would have carried off a good part of the Perot vote. So Perot was happy last week to praise Powell while he buried him. On CNN's Larry King Live, Perot talked about what a fine candidate Powell would have been, while advancing his own agenda. Perot blamed "the dirty tricks, the gutter politics" for scaring off the best contenders.
To remind Perot's followers of why they rejected both parties in the first place, there is the prospect this week of a partial shutdown of the Federal Government or a temporary default on U.S. debt payment. Both could happen if the President vetoes the temporary debt-limit extension that the Republican Congress has put before him, and that requires him to approve their budget proposals. This is macho, partisan face-off time. If you're a Perot voter, or even if you're not, there could hardly be a better example of Beltway fecklessness.