This, I suspect, is what the media sound like to many voters right now, as we bombard them with stories about how incredibly unpopular Trump actually is. We sound like your annoying, amateur movie critic friend who tries to convince you "nobody" liked the film that is No. 1 at the box office. The argument just doesn't seem believable.

Many of the latest accounts of Trump's low esteem are based on a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, which revealed, as The Post's Friday front-page story about the results put it, an "overall 67 percent unfavorable rating — making Trump more disliked than any major-party nominee in the 32 years the survey has been tracking candidates."

These are important results, placed in important historical context. It is truly remarkable that Trump has achieved GOP front-runner status while simultaneously engendering unprecedented levels of disdain among so many demographic groups.

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But he is the front-runner — by a considerable margin — which could add a hollow ring to the past week's glut of "Trump is unpopular" stories, published everywhere from the Los Angeles Times to the Toronto Star. It's easy to imagine voters' initial reaction being, "Really? He keeps on winning, so how unpopular can he be?" And it's easy to imagine their second reaction being, "Typical media — exaggerating to make Trump look even worse than he his."

This is bad because the press already has a credibility problem. Only 40 percent of Americans trust the news media, according to Gallup. That's also a historic low. So we have something in common with Trump.

As Fix Original Recipe Chris Cillizza wrote this week, it's totally bunk to say the press hasn't done the job of scrutinizing and fact-checking the blustery billionaire. But it's also totally possible that a big reason why all the journalistic effort hasn't knocked Trump out of first place is that many voters don't believe what they read, see and hear in the media.

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So if we're going to report something that seems certain to provoke skepticism — something like "Candidate With Most Votes Isn't Popular" — then we would do well to explain what exactly we mean and why it's actually true. Reports about Trump's unpopularity are more believable, for instance, when we acknowledge (as The Fix's Philip Bump did in detail on Friday) that all but one of the five remaining candidates in both parties have net-negative favorability ratings -- i.e. more people dislike them than like them.

A whole lot of people don't like Trump. But they don't like the alternatives, either. And one of these unlikable candidates is very likely going to move into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. next year. Trump doesn't need to be popular; he just needs voters to pick him over his also-unpopular rivals.

Remember, too, that even as Trump's favorability rating declines, Republicans increasingly say they could see themselves supporting him. In a March NBC News-Wall Street Journal survey, 56 percent of GOP voters said they could see themselves supporting Trump; a year ago, just 23 percent said the same.

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That's a massive turnaround that seems to signal that at least some voters who view Trump unfavorably would nevertheless be willing to cast ballots for him in November — kind of like how some Democrats who don't think Hillary Clinton is "honest and trustworthy" will probably pull the lever for her, anyway.