Clinton Rolls to Decisive Victory : Feinstein Wins Senate Seat, Boxer Is Leading : Election: Arkansan runs up massive margin of electoral votes, winning traditional GOP states. After 12 years of gridlock, Democrats now control levers of government.

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, the self-styled “different kind of Democrat” who promised immediate help for the nation’s troubled economy, swept to a decisive victory over President Bush on Tuesday, rolling across states and regions that Republicans had called their own for more than a decade.

Clinton carried much of the East and Midwest and captured Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee and other usually Republican states in the South and West, including California, that had been key to Republican victories in five of the last six presidential elections.

With 83% of the vote counted, Clinton won 43% and carried 29 states, garnering 349 electoral votes. Bush won 38%, the worst showing for a Republican candidate since 1964. He carried only 12 states with 88 electoral votes. Independent candidate Ross Perot won 18% of the vote but carried no states.

Although Clinton took less than 50% of the vote in the three-way contest, his 5 percentage point margin over Bush was one of the largest Democratic victory margins in recent history--far larger than the narrow victories scored by past Democratic presidents, such as John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and Harry S. Truman.

And, after 12 years of partisan gridlock in Washington--with the Democrats controlling the Congress and the Republicans holding the White House--the election marked a dramatic change both in power and accountability. It gave the Democrats firm control of all the levers of government and handed them full responsibility for success or failure in resolving such pressing national problems as the stagnant economy, the rising cost of health care and the divisions and decay of the nation’s cities.

Clinton, 46, fought off attacks on his character first by Democratic rivals and then by Bush in a long, bitter and brutal campaign. His journey to the White House began more than a year ago in Little Rock, Ark., survived a second-place finish in the New Hampshire primary last February and ended Tuesday with a dawn rally in Denver.

With the campaign over, all three of the major candidates urged their supporters toward reconciliation.

Appearing before a cheering crowd of some 50,000 who greeted him outside the old Statehouse in Little Rock with chants of “landslide, landslide,” Clinton said he would accept the responsibilities of the presidency “with a full heart and a joyous spirit.”

Saying his was “more than a victory of party,” Clinton thanked Bush for his record of service to the country and pledged to reach out to Republicans and independents as well as Democrats in his new Administration. “To all those who voted for Mr. Bush and Mr. Perot,” Clinton said, “I know you love your country, too. We need your help.”

The election, he said, was “a clarion call for our country to face the challenges of the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the next century.”

“With high hopes and brave hearts, in massive numbers, the American people have voted to make a new beginning,” he said. “We need a new spirit of community,” he told his supporters, “We’re all in this together, and we will rise or fall together.”

Bush sounded a similar note, telling supporters in Houston that he had called Clinton to congratulate him and pledged that “our entire Administration will work closely with his team to ensure the smooth transition of power.”

“America must always come first,” he said. “Here’s the way I see it, and the country hould see it: the people have spoken.” Earlier in the day, as results began to pour in, Bush had given a rueful answer when asked his reaction to the vote. “I’ve been better. We’ll see.”

Vice President Dan Quayle, speaking to his supporters in Indianapolis, also offered congratulations to the victor. “This is Bill Clinton’s night,” he said. “If he runs the country as well as he ran his campaign, we’ll be all right.”

In Dallas, Perot urged his followers to support and work with the new Administration. But he also vowed to keep his supporters united. “Millions of you came together to take your country back,” he told a rally in Dallas. “You gave Washington a laser-like message, to listen to the people.”

Voters also chose 34 senators, 12 governors and the entire 435-member House of Representatives in Tuesday’s balloting. Not long ago the GOP had hoped to win control of the Senate--where Democrats currently hold a 57-43 seat majority--and make significant inroads into the Democrats’ 268-166 majority in the House. The stagnant economy and Bush’s unpopularity damaged those GOP dreams, although the Republicans were likely to gain a dozen House seats.

As the evening drew to a close, Democrats hoped to pick up one Senate seat and two governorships, for a total of 30.

The new members of Congress included a sharply increased number of minorities and women, among them Democrat Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois, the first black woman to be elected to the Senate.

Among the factors cheering the Democrats were widespread reports of increased turnout, with voting officials across the country reporting long lines at polling places.

Based on vote returns from most states, the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate estimated turnout to be somewhere in the range of 55%, the highest count since 1972 although not a record.

Four years ago, only 50.2% of voting age Americans showed up at the polls, the lowest turnout in half a century. The heightened public interest in this election was evident in high viewership of the presidential and vice presidential debates, the large numbers of people voting early in states that allow early balloting and the large number of people telling pollsters they are following the election closely.

For the presidency, the election marked a generational shift. Bush was almost certainly the last of a line of seven World War II veterans who have dominated presidential politics for four decades. Clinton, one of the youngest men ever to win the presidency, will be the first President born as part of the post-World War II baby boom and the first whose outlook will have been shaped by the nation’s great trauma in Vietnam.

For Bush, the loss marked the end of one of most stunning political falls in American history. Four years ago, Bush beat Michael S. Dukakis 53.4% to 45.6% to win the presidency, carrying 426 electoral votes. And only 19 months ago, when he led the nation and its allies to victory in the Persian Gulf War he held the highest public approval ratings ever recorded and seemed invincible.

But the perception that Bush failed to appreciate the depth of the nation’s economic troubles and his opposition to a larger role for the government in combatting them doomed his presidency.

Perot, the quixotic Texas billionaire who spent well over $60 million of his own money in an unorthodox campaign, cut into each party’s support--hurting Bush among both Republicans and independents and taking the ballots of many young voters away from the Democrats.

In the end, the votes Perot attracted were not a direct factor in the outcome, although he garnered a higher percentage of the vote than any third-party candidate since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. But his colorful style and blunt insistence that the candidates address what he called the crippling impact of the federal deficit did much to shape the final months of the campaign.

Certainly it was the economic issues Perot concentrated on that were uppermost in voters’ minds, although the voters in the end preferred Clinton to handle those questions.

With exit polls of voters showing that they concentrated on the economy above all else and that they favored Clinton on that issue, the Democrat’s victory covered all major demographic groups. He became the first Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon B. Johnson to win a plurality among white voters, and also won overwhelmingly among blacks and Latinos.

Clinton built his victory on solid support among Democrats--including many of those who had deserted their party to vote for Bush in 1988 and Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984--as well as major gains among independents. And he brought into the Democratic column many states that Republicans had long thought of as bastions.

In New England, for example, which was once the most solidly Republican section of the nation, Clinton beat Bush in Maine, where the President has his summer home, in Massachusetts, where Bush was born, and in Connecticut, where Bush grew up and where his father, Prescott, once served as a senator.

Four years ago, Bush won 62.4% of the vote in New Hampshire. Only Utah gave him a larger vote. This time, Clinton won the state, 39% to 38%, with 23% for Perot.

Next door, Vermont had voted Democratic only once since 1856, turning down even Franklin D. Roosevelt. Clinton won there, too, 47% to 31%, with 22% for Perot.

In the South, Clinton handily won his home state of Arkansas, as well as Tennessee, the home state of his running mate, Sen. Al Gore. But he also carried both Georgia and Louisiana, cutting deeply into the once-solid GOP southern base.

And in the West--the other center of Republican presidential success--Clinton carried not only California, which had not voted for a Democrat since 1964, but also the Rocky Mountain states of Colorado and New Mexico.

Clinton sealed his victory in the large industrial states of the Midwest, carrying every one of the major electoral battlegrounds in the region.

Bush’s last campaign ended in Houston, his adopted hometown, where he took an early morning jog Tuesday and signaled thumbs up when asked about his chances of victory. Casting a ballot with his wife, Barbara, later in the morning, he said he was “very, very pleased” that the campaign he had called the “ugliest” in his lifetime had finally ended.

Mary Matalin, Bush’s deputy campaign manager, acknowledged that the President’s campaign was a difficult battle from the beginning. “Sometimes the wind is at your back. Sometimes it’s in your face,” she said.

Gore, who joined Clinton for the victory rally in Little Rock, spent Election Day in his home of Carthage, Tenn., where he called for unity after accusing Bush of conducting an “all-out negative smear campaign.” He declared earlier in a tumultuous airport rally in Columbus, Ohio: “Our democracy deserves better.”

Inside the Clinton-Gore campaign headquarters in Little Rock, aides greeted early exit poll results signaling a large victory with stunned silence.

Campaign chief of staff Eli Segal, a longtime Democratic activist from Massachusetts, sounded close to tears as he spoke. “You’ll pardon me if I sound a little emotional,” he said. “You’re talking to someone who lost 24 years straight, going all the way back to Hubert (H.) Humphrey.”

Indeed, the people around Clinton--Democratic activists who have spent the vast majority of their adult lives watching their party lose presidential elections to the Republicans--felt much like Republicans in 1952, who pinched themselves as they watched Dwight D. Eisenhower’s victory put an end to 20 consecutive years of Democratic rule.

“We’re all sort of processing it right now,” said communications director George Stephanopoulos. “ . . . But the awesomeness is starting to set in.”

The dimensions of the apparent Democratic victory left many of Clinton’s aides hoping they were seeing a political development that would go beyond a single night’s election return.

“We’re talking about something far beyond what we could have expected when we woke up this morning,” said Segal. Just as the Democrats’ loss of the White House in 1968 signaled a major shift of voters to the Republican Party, “it’s at least possible that this could represent a movement of people to the Democratic Party” that will begin a Democratic era, he said.

Whether the Democratic victories will be lasting or instead prove as transient as Jimmy Carter’s triumph in 1976, remains to be seen, with much depending on Clinton’s ability to bring about the renewed economic growth he has promised.

All year, the election had defied conventional wisdom. At the end of the Gulf War, Republican strategists looked forward to a campaign that they believed would be dominated by issues of foreign affairs and Bush’s experience as commander in chief.

Clinton’s strategists saw the landscape differently, believing when the campaign started that a weak economy would grow ever weaker, dragging Bush down. The 1992 election, they believed, could well be won by a Democrat.

But most analysts had expected that if any Democrat were to win against Bush it would have to be one of the party’s well known figures, not a man such as Clinton--a virtual unknown, governor of one of the nation’s poorest and smallest states, remembered in the political community primarily for a disastrously lengthy speech at the 1988 Democratic Convention.

Moreover, Clinton was dogged by persistent questions about his personal character, including reports of marital infidelity that many Democratic Party officials feared would sink him.

Keenly aware of the public mood, Clinton focused almost exclusively on the economy. And with the promise that he would bring “change” and that he represented a “different kind of Democrat,” he seemed able to overcome many of the doubts voters continued to express about his trustworthiness and character.

Bush, for his part, never seemed able to fully comprehend, or address, the economic woes that had turned the nation against him. Repeatedly during the campaign he returned to the idea that the economy truly was in better shape than most voters thought--statements that only seemed to deepen voter antipathy toward him.

Propelled forward by his image as a moderate with specific answers to economic questions, Clinton charged to the front of the Democratic pack in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary.

Bush, meanwhile, struggled against an unexpected assault from his right mounted by conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan. The Buchanan challenge first unmasked how weak the President would be with voters angry about the economy and by Bush’s abandonment of his “read my lips: no new taxes” pledge. Democrats carefully took notes.

Allegations about Clinton’s personal life and revelations about his dealings with his draft board during the Vietnam War years nearly destroyed his candidacy in New Hampshire. But he doggedly persevered, pulling out a second-place finish that allowed him to proclaim himself the “comeback kid.”

From that point forward, although he continued to struggle with questions about his integrity, Clinton moved steadily toward the nomination.

Perot’s on-and-off campaign marked the first time a self-financed businessman had succeeded in using his own funds to force his way into the top tier of national political candidates. His independent campaign seemed certain to be the most successful third-party bid in modern times. Although he did not capture any electoral votes, he handily bested Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace’s 1968 showing in the popular vote when Wallace won 13.5% and carried five states.

News of Clinton’s victory sparked a spontaneous celebration on the streets of Washington, D.C., the city most immediately affected by this dramatic shift in the control of the government. Young Democrats were literally dancing on downtown K St. after the networks declared Clinton the winner. Total strangers greeted each other on the sidewalks with high-fives, and jubilant motorists honked their horns late into the night.

In Los Angeles, Democrats held an exuberant victory party at the Biltmore Hotel, scene of many past bitter Democratic gatherings on election night. The more than 2,000 Democrats gathered almost seem shocked to be on the winning side nationally for a change.

“We’ve waited a long time for this victory--12 years,” said Mayor Tom Bradley. “And if any of you want to say it, you’re entitled--how sweet it is.”

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Jonathan Peterson, William Eaton, Sara Fritz and Matt Marshall in Washington and Larry Gordon in Los Angeles.

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The Winning Formula

Electorial votes listed in each state. Results as of midnight PST.

*

George Bush ALABAMA: 9 IDAHO: 4 INDIANA: 12 KANSAS: 6 MISSISSIPPI: 7 NEBRASKA: 5 NORTH CAROLINA: 14 NORTH DAKOTA: 3 OKLAHOMA: 8 SOUTH CAROLINA: 8 SOUTH DAKOTA: 3 TEXAS: 32 UTAH: 5 VIRGINIA: 13 WYOMING: 3 *

Bill Clinton: ARKANSAS: 6 CALIFORNIA: 54 COLORADO: 8 CONNECTICUT: 8 DELAWARE: 3 WASHINGTON D.C.: 3 HAWAII: 4 ILLINOIS: 22 IOWA: 7 KENTUCKY: 8 LOUISIANA: 9 MAINE: 4 MARYLAND: 10 MASSACHUSETTS: 12 MICHIGAN: 18 MINNESOTA: 10 MISSOURI: 11 MONTANA: 3 NEW HAMPSHIRE: 4 NEW JERSEY: 15 NEW MEXICO: 5 NEW YORK: 33 OHIO: 21 OREGON: 7 PENNSYLVANIA: 23 RHODE ISLAND: 4 TENNESSEE: 11 VERMONT: 3 WASHINGTON: 11 WEST VIRGINIA: 5 WISCONSIN: 11 *

No Results: ALASKA: 3 ARIZONA: 8 FLORIDA: 25 GEORGIA: 13 NEVADA: 4