Donald Trump loves to talk about polls. He’s obsessed with them. By his own admission, the reason that he talks so much about polls is that he’s number one in all of them, and if he wasn’t number one, he wouldn’t talk about them. Well, here is a poll in which Donald Trump is number 1, that he is nonetheless guaranteed not to mention.
Are you ready for it? Here it is: if Donald Trump gets the Republican nomination, he would be the most unpopular nominee among the general electorate of any candidate, ever, since Gallup began polling. That’s right – no nominee of either party – even the ones who lost badly, have ever been as unpopular as Donald Trump.
Right now, Donald Trump is viewed favorably by a meager 33% of America. He is viewed unfavorably by 60% of Americans. No candidate has ever before had an unfavorability higher than 57%, which is the level when George H. W. Bush had when he was about to lose to Bill Clinton.
Donald Trump’s unfavorability right now is almost as high as George W. Bush’s was when he left office (66%), which is the highest unfavorability any Presidential nominee has ever had, even in a non-election year. Let’s put that in perspective – George W. Bush was so unpopular in 2008 that he was politely told not to attend the Republican convention because the McCain campaign could not risk being seen on television with him. And roughly a third of the Republican party right now thinks it would be a good idea to nominate him.
The only potential saving grace for Trump is that Hillary also has 52% unfavorability rating, which makes her the second highest unfavorables at the start of any campaign. That is the only reason that he’s only losing potential head-to-head matchups against her by 10% right now. If the Democrats had literally anyone else – including Bernie Sanders – who was likely to win the nomination, Trump would be doomed from the start, and he probably is now.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member