Clinton Efforts May Redefine Party’s Appeal

Bill Clinton’s closely fought victory over President Bush on Tuesday sketched the outline of a new Democratic majority in national politics. But his performance in office will determine whether he can fill in the picture.

Clinton’s victory Tuesday was defined far more by erosion of the Republican base than expansion of the Democratic vote. Across the country--and with many key demographic groups--Clinton’s success was standing his ground: He held roughly the same percentage of the vote as Michael S. Dukakis four years ago, while Bush nose-dived in the three-way competition with Ross Perot.

With that pattern in place, some observers saw in last night’s results echoes of the 1968 election, when Republican Richard M. Nixon and independent George C. Wallace split the votes of those alienated from the ruling Democratic coalition. “It is the Democratic mirror image of 1968,” said John R. Petrocik, a political scientist at UCLA.

Like Clinton, Nixon in 1968 won only about 43% of the vote. But he turned his narrow three-way victory into a landslide four years later by absorbing most of Wallace’s vote into his electoral coalition. That new Republican majority--the traditional upscale GOP vote cemented to Southern whites and Rust Belt blue-collar ethnics--dominated national politics for the next 20 years.

To define a Democratic majority as lasting as the GOP coalition that collapsed Tuesday, Clinton faces roughly the same task as Nixon, observers say. Just as Nixon soldered Wallace voters into the GOP, Clinton’s hope of establishing a new Democratic coalition now depends on his ability to attract the suburban independents, moderates and Reagan Democrats who left Bush for Perot--but did not cross all the way into the Democratic column on Tuesday.

“The outline of a new Democratic majority is there easily enough,” said political analyst Kevin Phillips, whose book, “The Emerging Republican Majority,” predicted the movement of Wallace voters into the GOP and the party’s subsequent domination of national politics. “If the economy is put right, Clinton can get a lot of those suburban Republicans who were able to walk away from their party and go to Perot as a halfway house.”

A Los Angeles Times exit poll Tuesday illuminated the conflict within Perot voters. Hostile toward Bush and skeptical about Democrats, they would have split their vote between the two parties if the billionaire had not rejoined the race. But in fact, they felt most comfortable not aligning with either party.

Changing that won’t be easy for Clinton, who faces countervailing pressures that could inhibit his ability to reach out to those moderate Perot supporters who are generally suspicious of government spending and eager for action against the deficit.

Though he portrayed himself throughout the campaign as a “different kind of Democrat,” Clinton won not because he reclaimed swing voters but because he consolidated the party’s traditional base with such groups as minorities and union members. Having played such a large role in Clinton’s victory, many of those groups may now intensify their demands on the President-elect for the kind of new government programs that the swing Perot voters tend to view skeptically.

“Those (Perot) voters might be attracted to Clinton as a new kind of Democrat, if he doesn’t pursue tax and spend policies in office,” said Earl Black, chairman of the political science department at the University of South Carolina. “But it is going to be awfully hard for Clinton to govern that way given the pent-up demand among Democratic interest groups.”

Clearly, it was traditional Democrats who keyed Clinton’s victory. According to The Times’ exit poll, 74% of Clinton’s voters Tuesday were partisan Democrats, 17% were independents and 9% were Republicans. In 1988, ABC exit polls showed Dukakis’ vote broke down in almost identical proportions.

The results point more to a repudiation of Bush than an enthusiastic turn toward the Democrats. Unlike 1980, when Ronald Reagan’s victory over a discredited incumbent swept in dozens of Republican congressional candidates, Clinton had no apparent coattails. The Democrats gained just one seat in the Senate, provided they hold onto a Georgia seat in a December runoff, and lost nine in the House of Representatives.

Stanley Greenberg, Clinton’s pollster, argues that holding the Democratic percentage from 1988’s two-way race in 1992’s three-way contest itself testifies to a wider appeal. But only by that definition did Clinton broaden the base.

In only four states, including his home state of Arkansas, was Clinton’s share of the vote more than 2 percentage points greater than Dukakis’ losing showing in 1988; in another 12 states he ran either even with Dukakis or marginally ahead.

In the rest of the states, Clinton’s vote lagged behind Dukakis’. Dukakis’ share of the vote equaled or exceeded Clinton’s in all of the six largest states that the Arkansas governor carried Tuesday: California, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and New Jersey.

But Clinton was able to carry those states because Bush’s support collapsed in the three-way competition. In these critical states, and others across the nation, the results suggest that Perot acted like a solvent, pulling away former supporters from Bush. In the six big battlegrounds, for example, while Clinton maintained the 1988 Democratic vote, Bush’s vote plummeted 14 to 19 points from four years ago, with Perot attracting the remainder.

In the key suburban counties around the country, where Clinton had targeted his centrist appeal, election results show the same pattern. Despite his efforts, the governor posted only modest improvement on the 1988 Democratic results. But in most of those pivotal counties he gained ground by standing still--or just ceding less ground than Bush did to Perot’s insurgency.

Consider these examples from the most closely fought Rust Belt states:

* Clinton won three crucial Philadelphia suburban counties that had all given Bush landslides over Dukakis four years ago. But in winning Montgomery and Delaware counties Clinton ran only 3 to 4 points ahead of Dukakis, and in Bucks County he improved on the 1988 Democratic vote by only half a percentage point. The difference was Perot’s success at eating into Bush’s vote.

* In Michigan, Clinton supporters went into Election Day with high hopes of carrying both Macomb County--the classic home of blue-collar Reagan Democrats--and Oakland County, a more upscale Detroit suburb whose residents typically vote Republican but hold moderate views on social issues, such as abortion. In the end, Clinton failed to improve on Dukakis’ showing in either county and lost them both.

But Bush’s vote imploded in both places, denying him the margins he needed to carry the state.

Overall, according to The Times exit poll, Clinton won 55% of Reagan Democrats--only a slim improvement from the 51% that Dukakis carried four years ago, according to the ABC exit poll.

In Middlesex N.J., and Montgomery Ohio, Clinton won with almost exactly the same share of the vote that doomed Dukakis to landslide defeat.

In major cities, the story was less uniform but ran in a similar pattern. Compared to 1988, the Democrats enjoyed much larger margins over the Republicans in Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia, results show. But Clinton’s percentage of the vote was almost exactly the same as Dukakis’ in all three cities.

These results all point toward the same conclusion: A large number of voters around the nation who had been supporting GOP presidential candidates during the 1980s rejected Bush but remained hesitant about endorsing a Democrat.

Once he takes office, Clinton’s task is to persuade them to continue their political journey--even while Perot suggests that he would like to continue influencing them himself.

“There was no fundamental shift to the Democratic Party Tuesday,” said Frank Luntz, who conducted polls for Perot’s initial presidential campaign. “For Clinton to fashion a new Democratic Party, he’s going to have to do it in the next two years by the way he governs.”

Times researchers Tracy Shryer and D’Jamila Salem contributed to this story.

Impact of Age and Income on the Presidential Vote

This exit poll by The Times indicates how candidates appeal to certain voter groups. The poll is based on interviews with 14,413 voters nationwide at 201 polling places Tuesday.

% of all Each column shows percent voters of the group who voted for: who are: Clinton Bush Perot SEX: 48 Male 40 39 21 52 Female 45 38 17 RACE: 84 White 37 42 21 10 Black 86 9 5 3 Latino 53 32 15 1 Asian 45 38 17 RELIGION: 25 White Catholic 39 39 22 47 White Protestant 33 48 19 26 White born-again 25 57 19 Christians 5 Jewish 68 21 11 AGE: 22 18 to 29 42 37 21 50 30 to 49 42 38 20 19 50 to 64 43 40 17 9 65 and over 49 38 13 EDUCATION: 33 High school 44 36 20 grad or less 26 Some college 40 38 22 25 College graduate 39 41 20 16 Post-graduate 49 38 13 INCOME: 21 Less than $20,000 53 29 18 35 $20,000 to $39,999 41 38 21 22 $40,000 to $59,999 39 40 21 10 $60,000 to $75,000 38 45 17 12 More than $75,000 36 47 17 IDEOLOGY: 18 Liberal 68 9 13 52 Middle of the road 45 32 23 30 Conservative 16 66 18 OTHERS: 3 Gay/lesbian 74 16 10 2 First-time voters* 46 28 26

* In presidential election Source: Los Angeles Times exit poll taken Nov. 3, 1992. The margin of error for the total samples is plus or minus 4 percentage points. The margin of error for subgroups may be somewhat higher. Numbers may not add up to 100% because some candidates are not displayed.