At the same time, he acknowledged that a large part of the reason for Mr. Brown's victory in Connecticut may have been an anti-Clinton vote.

Though polls show Mr. Perot would draw evenly from the two major parties, Republicans fear competition for the anti-Clinton vote.

Most of those who cast the anti-Clinton votes will still be in office.

In neighborhoods where yard signs have promised for months that "we will remember in november," the anti-Clinton vote piled up.

The Republican nominee has decided that Mr. Perot would inhibit his attacks and split the anti-Clinton vote.

(He won by only 108 votes, and the substantial anti-Clinton vote of Otsego County was excluded on a technicality.)

Republicans say the anti-Clinton vote will prevail in the end and lead to a Lazio victory.

But several Gore advisers believe that he would have been better off with several rather than one opponent competing for the anti-Gore, anti-Clinton vote.

Republicans, who fear that Mr. Perot will eat into the anti-Clinton vote, are generally opposed.

This diminishes his third-party threat to divide the anti-Clinton vote in 1996.