NEWS ANALYSIS : Weaker Perot Might Still Affect Election : Campaign: Bush team hopes to get a fresh look from voters. Clinton aides say there is no reason to expect any big effect.

With his last-minute return to the presidential race, Ross Perot could dramatically scramble the deck--or merely play out a losing hand.

Advisers to President Bush and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton agree that the Texas billionaire has virtually no chance of recapturing anywhere near the breadth of support he had commanded in spring and early summer, when he led in several national surveys.

But they disagree about how much he could change the dynamic of a race that has left Clinton holding a 9- to 12-point lead over Bush in most polls since Labor Day.

“The question is, how much does this start the race over again?” Democratic consultant Brian Lunde said. “And I just don’t know the answer.”

With Bush trailing--and more bad news expected in the unemployment figures to be released today--Republicans hope that Perot will create enough turbulence to cause voters to reconsider the entire contest. “We were just in a rut,” one senior White House official said minutes after Perot’s announcement. “The combination of Perot’s emergence, plus the new discussion about debates, has thrown things in some flux and probably gives us a chance to ask voters to take a fresh look.”

Clinton advisers insist there is no evidence that Perot is a big enough pebble to create such dramatic ripples in the presidential race. In Clinton’s private polling this week, aides say, Perot’s support actually dropped in many states as he moved toward his announcement.

A CNN/Gallup/USA Today poll completed Wednesday night showed Perot drawing just 7% of the vote, to Bush’s 35% and Clinton’s 52%. Most national surveys completed last week had found Perot running in double digits.

“I don’t think this is going to produce an upheaval,” said Stanley B. Greenberg, Clinton’s pollster. “I think it is going to be anticlimactic. It’s not going to be as compelling a candidacy as it was, and it will fade like most third-party candidacies toward the end. The overall trend is downward.”

Even before he left the race in July, Perot’s support had been eroding, driven down by campaign missteps and allegations about his use of private investigators to collect information on business competitors, political rivals and even his own family members. Perot denied almost all such allegations, but he had fallen into third place by the time he announced that he would not run.

Perot returned to the race this week to the resumption of that drumbeat. Earlier this week, U.S. News & World Report said Perot once hired a private investigator to follow a Vanderbilt University English professor friendly with his daughter, Nancy Perot. On Wednesday, several newspapers reported that Perot hired private investigators to look into some of his own volunteer coordinators. He also ran into a squall over reports that he complained that two female NBC reporters who had closely questioned him earlier this week were “trying to prove their manhood.”

Such controversies--and the disappointment that followed Perot’s abrupt decision to abandon his campaign July 16--have taken a measurable toll on the billionaire’s public image.

In the 11 weeks since he stepped aside, Perot’s negative ratings with the public have reached dimensions that would send most politicians running for cover, not for President. Depending on the survey, from half to two-thirds of the public now views Perot negatively--double or even triple the number with a positive impression.

“In the focus groups I’ve done, people say we gave Perot a chance and he wasn’t tough enough,” said Ed Sarpolus, a Democratic pollster in Lansing, Mich.

But if he has little chance of being elected himself, Perot could still influence the election in several ways, analysts say.

If the national race tightens, even a small vote for Perot could potentially shift the balance in tightly contested states such as Michigan or Texas.

At the moment, polls do not show Perot running strongly enough to carry any state--or even to tip any from Clinton to Bush or vice versa. Polls last week in Michigan, for example, found Clinton leading Bush by 9 points whether or not Perot was in the race; similarly, a recent New Jersey survey found Clinton holding a 12-point advantage over Bush in a two- or three-way race. Even with Perot in, Clinton still holds wide leads in California and New York.

But in a number of other states, Perot somewhat narrows Clinton’s advantage. Recent surveys show Perot more meaningfully tightening Clinton’s advantage in such swing states as Colorado, Kentucky and Pennsylvania. Most observers believe that Perot would also steepen the climb for Clinton in Ohio--a state where the Democrat is drawing a large number of conservative, anti-Bush voters.

On the other hand, by drawing away white voters, Perot moves Clinton somewhat closer to Bush in such Southern states as Virginia, Louisiana and Mississippi. And with his support still substantial in Texas--private surveys show him getting about one-fifth of the vote--Perot guarantees that Bush will have to fight until the end for a state he cannot win without.

But projecting forward from such numbers in September to guess Perot’s ultimate impact in November is a hazardous business. Perot’s effect will depend on a series of factors, including how he runs and who he attacks.

Most pollsters expect Perot’s support to continue to recede as the election nears and voters focus on the near-certainty that he will not win. Adding to the difficulty Perot faces in broadening his appeal is the hardening of partisan support behind the two major-party candidates since July.

Even so, a minority of analysts believes that with his ability to purchase large amounts of air time, Perot could find an audience for his broadsides against both parties and hold onto a substantial protest vote.

“I think the guy is one good message away from being a real factor,” Lunde said. Perot’s prospects of making such a splash will turn on whether he can re-establish enough credibility to sell his austere plan to eliminate the federal budget deficit, Lunde says. Early evidence suggests that Perot may have some ground to cover on that front as well.