A little more than two months before the election and both our major party presidential candidates are wildly unpopular. The latest poll from Washington Post-ABC News shows that not only are they viewed equally poorly by voters, but a record number of voters dislike Hillary Clinton.
More than half of Americans, 56%, hold an unfavorable opinion of Clinton.
That’s the worst image Clinton has had in her quarter-century in national public life. Her previous low favorable rating this year was in July, when it was 42 percent, lower than any mark in historical Post-ABC polls except a few points in the 1990s when a large share of the public had no opinion of her. Her previous high for unfavorable views was in June, when 55 percent disliked Clinton.
Trump is in worse shape, with almost two-thirds (66%) of Americans holding an unfavorable impression of him.
But the good news for Trump is that when we look at registered voters, the unfavorable ratings are virtually equivalent and in the election calculus, voters matter and non-voters don’t.
The WaPo admits, “If it weren’t for Trump, in fact, Clinton would be the most unpopular major-party presidential nominee in modern American history.”
And it gets worse for Hillary. Her favorables have dropped among groups widely considered to be her core supporters.
- Her favorable rating among women dropped from 54 percent to just 45 percent.
- Among Hispanics, it went from 71 percent to 55 percent.
- Among liberals, it went from 76 percent to 63 percent.
One has to wonder, where does she have to go to build support? Clinton has more name ID than Kim Kardashian. People have made up their mind about her, they know her. In fact, she is viewed more favorably when she is hidden from the public. But even with her strategy to ignore the media and refusal to hold press conference, she’s been dominating the news cycle with the consequences of her decision to conduct official government business on a homebrewed email server and the shifty business of her charity, the Clinton Foundation.
Can she turn herself around? There’s still time before election day.
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