[Danzig]

and, more on the '3rd party candidate/spoiler' argument, this in regards to perot:

The effect of Ross Perot's candidacy has been a contentious point of debate for many years. In the ensuing months after the election, various Republicans asserted that Perot had acted as a spoiler, enough to the detriment of Bush to lose him the election. While many disaffected conservatives may have voted for Ross Perot to protest Bush's tax increase, further examination of the Perot vote in the Election Night exit polls not only showed that Perot siphoned votes nearly equally among Bush and Clinton,[26] but of the voters who cited Bush's broken "No New Taxes" pledge as "very important," two thirds voted for Bill Clinton.[27] A mathematical look at the voting numbers reveals that Bush would have had to win 12.2% of Perot's 18.8% of the vote, 65% of Perot's support base, to earn a majority of the vote, and would have needed to win nearly every state Clinton won by less than five percentage points.[28] Furthermore, Perot's best results were in states that strongly favored either Clinton or Bush, or carried few electoral votes, limiting his real electoral impact for either candidate.