Heeding the Call: An Assessment of Mobilization into H. Ross Perot's 1992 Presidential Campaign

Abstract

One of the most remarkable aspects of the 1992 Perot movement was its ability to mobilize thousands of activist volunteers. We draw upon studies of participation and the literature on third-party voting to suggest explanations for activist involvement for Perot. Our analysis makes use of a national sample of potential activists who telephoned Perot's volunteer hotline early in the 1992 campaign, and the 1992 American National Election Study. As the third-party literature leads us to expect, negative attitudes toward the institutions of government and the major party candidates (especially George Bush) were significant in stimulating the initial contact with Perot's organization. Active mobilization into the campaign among those who called Perot headquarters depended largely on a positive view of Perot, support for some issues on the candidate's agenda, and experience participating in politics prior to 1992. During the fall, however, the insurgency lost recruits due to the increasingly partisan nature of the contest and concerns about Perot's chances of winning. The general dynamic of declining support for third-party candidates in the partisan fall campaign appears to hold in the Perot case, although the decline in support among activists was nowhere near as dramatic as the decline in the general public.