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Bush Daddy was ahead of Clinton until the week of the convention, when Clinton picked Gore. Clinton was blasted constantly by the press. There is a revisionism which claims Clinton was the media darling, but it's a blatant lie. Clinton was so hounded by the media that he refused to speak to them during the primaries for a while, and began going on MTV and Arsenio Hall to speak directly to the people. Every time he went before the media, or spoke where there was network coverage, the stories always began "Clinton can't escape allegations of draft-dodging, womanizing and drug use." Reporters would be booed for asking such questions, but they would ask, and then claim that the controversies wouldn't go away. For a while, pundits were speculating that the Democratic Party had gone the way of the Whigs.
But Bush couldn't handle a two front war. When Perot got into the race, he snatched a lot of Democrats who were upset by Clinton, and a few Bushites, and went ahead of Bush. Then he started speaking, and people realized what those of us in Texas already knew-- Perot was a nutcase. He started falling. But Bush, whose family has never run a campaign on issues in their existence, had attacked Perot (probably set him up on a few things), rather than building a real case for his own merits. So when Perot's support began declining, people shifted to Clinton, instead of back to Perot. Clinton's appearances on pop tv (which were highly ridiculed) brought him a new audience.
The race had a high turnout, especially amongst younger voters, because Clinton had spoken directly to them (us). But the mainstream media never warmed up to Clinton. They treated him as badly as president as they did when he was the candidate. About the time he was impeached, the media began to soften a bit, mainly because Clinton had a 60% approval rating, and people were tuning out the media.
Sorry, long answer.
All I remember on Carter was that he was up and down with Reagan, mostly even, but sometimes ahead, until a few days before the election, when Reagan pulled it out. Reagan scared everyone, who was convinced he would get us into nuclear war (the terrorism of that era), but when Iran refused to release the hostages, people turned on Carter. Also, Reagan fared better in a last minute debate than anyone expected. It was a year later before it was discovered that Reagan had stolen Carter's campaign notes, and thus knew what his answers would be.
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