Political pundits often point to Donald Trump’s high unfavorable ratings as the main reason why his presidential campaign will ultimately fail. The conventional wisdom is that Trump is just too unpopular with too many voters to win either the GOP nomination or the presidency itself. A report published over the weekend by Gallup coroborates that theory by putting Trump’s unfavorable ratings in historical context.
Examining recent polling data, Frank Newport, Gallup’s editor in chief, found that the Republican front-runner has a higher unfavorable rating than any nominated candidate from either party going back to 1992, the year Gallup first began tracking candidates’ favorability ratings.
Gallup finds that 60 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of the real estate mogul, while just 33 percent view him favorably.
Trump’s 60 percent unfavorable rating is significantly higher than the second most unpopular candidate, Hillary Clinton’s (52 percent), and all the other major candidates. It’s twice as high as Ben Carson’s. Trump’s net favorability of -27 is far above the next closest candidates, Clinton and Jeb Bush, who have -10 percent net favorability.
Newport analyzed the favorability ratings of major-party presidential nominees going back to 1992 and found that “Trump now has a higher unfavorable rating than any candidate at any time during all of these previous election cycles.”
What’s more, Newport notes, Trump’s record-low numbers don’t even take “into account the fact that unfavorable ratings tend to rise in the heat of a general election campaign as the barbs, negative ads and heightened partisanship are taken to their highest levels.”
The only other major-party nominees for president to rise over 50 percent were George H.W. Bush, whose unfavorable rating reached 57 percent in October 1992, and Al Gore in December 2000 (during the election recount) at 52 percent.
On the flip side, Barack Obama enjoyed historically low unfavorable ratings during his initial run for president. His never got higher than 37 percent.
Only one major presidential candidate has had unfavorable ratings as high as Trump’s. In 1992, Ross Perot’s unfavorable ratings eclipsed 60 percent a couple times during the campaign. Newport suggests that this was partly due to the fact that Perot ran as an independent candidate and thus neither major political party felt any loyalty toward him.
Perot received 19 percent of the popular vote in 1992, which arguably handed the election to Bill Clinton. Many pundits believe Trump’s presence in the 2016 campaign may do the same for Clinton’s wife.
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
