How pathetic is this presidential election cycle? According to 538’s Harry Enten on Thursday, it’s Guinness-Book-of-World-Records-breaking bad…
By Harry Enten
Fivethirtyeight.com
May 5, 2016 at 8:29 AM
The Democratic primary will technically march on, but Hillary Clinton is almost certainly going to be her party’s nominee. Same with Donald Trump. And voters don’t appear thrilled at the prospect: Clinton and Trump are both more strongly disliked than any nominee at this point in the past 10 presidential cycles.
Normally, when we talk about candidate likability, we use favorability ratings, which combine “strongly favorable,” “somewhat favorable,” “somewhat unfavorable” and “strongly unfavorable.” But that didn’t work so well in the Republican primary, where Trump was able to win despite a relatively low net favorability rating because his “strongly favorable” rating with Republican primary voters was among the highest in the field. So let’s look at Trump and Clinton’s “strongly1 favorable” and “strongly unfavorable” ratings among general election voters.2
These are people who don’t just like or dislike the candidates, they really like or dislike them.
No past candidate comes close to Clinton, and especially Trump, in terms of engendering strong dislike a little more than six months before the election…
“Everything you need to know about this year's presidential election in one graphic” (see up above).
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While I strongly differ with Jonathan Turley on about two out of every three of his libertarian views on the issues, in this particular instance, at least in the first couple of paragraphs of his analysis and commentary on Friday, he’s spot-on...
Jonathan Turley
jonathanturley.org
May 6, 2016
A new poll again shows what we have previously discussed as the absurdity of an election that produced the two least popular candidates as what many view as the only choices for the general election. In prior discussions, due to the duopoly on power, citizens will be told to choice between two people that they dislike to an unprecendented degree. What is fascinating is the Democratic National Committee head Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has stated that she is opposed to independents even playing a role in primaries — the reason why Clinton has struggled despite every advantage given to her by the establishment. Wasserman-Schultz, who may be the least popular DNC head in history, sees the problem is giving too many people a voice in the candidates.
The poll shows that “no past candidate comes close to Clinton, and especially Trump, in terms of engendering strong dislike a little more than six months before the election.” Clinton racks up 37 percent in the truly radioactive category of “strongly unfavorable” while Trump is at 53 percent. It is the ultimate race between perceived evils and both parties will now work to make voters hate the other more as the strategy for winning the White House. Indeed, another polls shows that roughly half of voters supporting Trump are dong so to block Clinton and vice versa…
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h/t Kossack Don midwest
