High-tech executives polled on the presidential candidates strongly backed Ross Perot, giving him a 55 percent preference rate compared with a 29 percent rate for President Bush, a trade group said this week.
The poll, taken last month by the American Electronics Association, also showed Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, the likely Democratic candidate, with just 4 percent of those polled. Other candidates received 12 percent.The poll had a 17 percent response rate, with 408 of 2,450 chief executive officers responding to mailed survey forms.
A recent poll by Fortune magazine of Fortune 500 and Service 500 chief executive officers was overwhelmingly in support of Bush - 78 percent of those polled supported the president, 11 percent backed Perot and 4 percent favored Clinton.
Perot created a spectacularly successful business, Electronic Data Systems, and sold the computer-service company to General Motors for more than $2.5 billion in 1984. Two years later, the auto giant paid him $700 million just to leave GM's board of directors and the company.
Richard C. Carlson, a principle with Spectrum Economics Inc. and author, said the results of the American Electronics poll were not a surprise.
"The U.S. electronics industry has had a disastrous two years and the political fallout has just begun," Carlson said. "Perot is a known quantity to the electronics industry, and his third-party candidacy has the most potential since Teddy Roosevelt in 1912."
The trade group said 342 84 percent - of the chief executive officers were from companies with revenues of as much as $50 million. Of those, 56 percent opted for Perot, 28 percent for Bush and 4 percent for Clinton.