Chrissie Thompson

cthompson@enquirer.com

The conventions are over, and Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton each have gathered most of their party's leaders to their sides, just in time for the 100-day countdown to the election.

But what about the rest of Ohio, the ordinary voters who will decide the outcome Nov. 8?

The fact is, we're getting ready to elect a president whom a majority of us dislike and distrust.

About 60 percent of Ohio voters had an unfavorable opinion of Trump in a Quinnipiac University poll this month, and the same percentage disliked Clinton. That mimics national trends. Fifty-six percent of registered voters said Trump wasn't honest in a national CBS News poll this month. Sixty-seven percent said Clinton wasn't honest.

For Trump, the problem is the derision, the divisive policies and rhetoric, and the careless approach to facts on the campaign trail. For Clinton, it's the private email server while she was secretary of state and the contradictory information about that decision, plus the lack of openness with reporters and the scripted, stilted speeches.

Clinton acknowledged her problem in part in her speech Thursday to accept the Democratic nomination, saying, remarkably: “I get it that some people just don’t know what to make of me.”

As for Trump, the real-estate mogul turned Republican nominee? That's not his style.

The two candidates are suffering equally with voters: Polls in Ohio, the quintessential swing state, show Clinton and Trump tied.

The dynamic is one both of the state's party chairmen readily acknowledge.

"I don't know that I've ever been in an environment quite like this before," said Matt Borges, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party. David Pepper, the state's Democratic chairman, said the negative opinion of the two candidates "I guess isn't a shock." Yet both men insist their candidate will win.

Cautious unity

In some ways, it's an accomplishment for both Trump and Clinton to emerge from their respective national conventions with the party faithful on their sides.

The Democratic National Convention last week had more fireworks in its early days.

Leaked emails possibly accessed through a hack showed party leaders had preferred Clinton over U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont during the long primary season. Sanders' supporters booed and shouted at the mention of Clinton's name throughout the event's first day. A handful continued to heckle during her speech Thursday. Former state Sen. Nina Turner of Cleveland became something of a celebrity for disaffected Sanders voters, who created a hashtag, #ImWithNina, and rallied in her honor Wednesday when she said she was barred from making a speech at the convention.

Still, Ohio's Sanders delegates such as Thomas Watral, of Mentor in northeast Ohio, said they would back Clinton in the election.

"We're young. We're trying to get involved," Watral said at the rally for Turner.

Republicans who oppose Trump were less demonstrative the week earlier in Cleveland, if more cautious in their eventual support.

Many anti-Trump leaders, such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, stayed away from the event. Much of the week's drama played out in barbs between Trump's campaign and Ohio Gov. John Kasich and supporters of his presidential bid, some of whom joined in brief shouts on the convention floor for a person-by-person vote on the event's rules. Besides cheering for the bound delegates Kasich earned, the Ohio delegates maintained a largely subdued presence during the rest of the week. And when Ted Cruz took a different approach, parading his lack of support for Trump at the convention podium, he was booed and jeered out of the arena.

After Trump spoke Thursday, Ohio delegates offered selective praise. In the week since, tension has subsided, Borges said. Kasich staffer Tim Biggam, who was going to help coordinate Trump's campaign with Ohio Republican Party efforts, backed out of the plan amid the Kasich-Trump feud, and he hasn't changed his mind. But John Roscoe, a veteran of campaigns for Mitt Romney and Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, still plans to take a similar job for the party, Borges said.

Will the cautious support from Ohio delegates turn more enthusiastic? "I think we are moving in that direction," Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said at the end of the GOP convention.

A chance for third parties?

Average voters who aren't involved with a party or campaign are another story. Ohioans repeatedly say they're looking for the "lesser of two evils" in the 2016 election.

That has third parties holding out hope for a foothold this year.

The Green Party candidate, Massachusetts physician Jill Stein, was campaigning last week to win over Sanders supporters who won't back Clinton. She's likely to appear on Ohio ballots, since the Green Party received recognition under Ohio law by receiving more than 2 percent of the vote in the 2014 gubernatorial election. The party has until Aug. 10 to submit her name for the ballot.

Some conservatives who dislike Trump have been considering Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico. Johnson has reached about half of the 15 percent in national polls that would gain him entrance into the general election debates. He often says he'll be on the ballot in all 50 states, wooing would-be supporters with the possibility of gaining traction nationally.

His problem? In Ohio, the perennial swing state, he's not yet on the ballot.

Libertarians are not currently recognized as an official party in Ohio because they didn't field a candidate for governor in 2014. Their candidate, Charlie Earl, was kept off the ballot because contractors gathering signatures to qualify him for the election failed to disclose who was paying them, a decision backed by several court rulings.

Ironically, supporters of Kasich's presidential bid are among those who have considered voting for Johnson, but Kasich backers were supportive of the effort to keep Earl off the ballot. Earl was seen as someone who could woo disaffected conservatives away from Kasich in his re-election bid. The Ohio Republican Party eventually helped pay the fees of the law firm that handled the case against Earl.

Libertarians decided not to seek to file more than 30,000 signatures to requalify as a party, so they are hoping to put Johnson's name on the 2016 ballot as an independent candidate. To do so, they need to file 5,000 valid signatures by Aug. 10. State party spokesman Aaron Keith Harris declined to say how many signatures the group has gathered so far.

"We have to assume that Kasich, (Republican Secretary of State Jon) Husted, and the GOP mafia are going to pull out all the stops to invalidate, disqualify, nitpick, etc.," Harris said in an email.

Still, he said, he's confident Johnson will qualify for the ballot. "Hillary and Trump are the best public relations team the Libertarian Party could ever hope for," he said.

Still tied

What would third-party votes do for Clinton and Trump? We don't know. In recent Ohio surveys, Johnson and Stein have each polled in the single digits, taking some votes away from Trump and Clinton, but leaving them statistically tied.

Borges and Pepper, the party chairmen, each point to ways their candidate can win – negative opinions and third parties notwithstanding.

Clinton can win over undecided Ohio voters, Pepper said, through repeated visits to the Buckeye State, starting with the ones she has scheduled this weekend in Northeast Ohio and Columbus. Trump has his own visit in Columbus scheduled for Monday, but to Pepper, more exposure in Ohio hurts Trump.

"When you see her up close, you see someone who's a genuine, nice person," Pepper said. "She's capable of building the relationship she needs with voters. Trump seems incapable of doing that. He doubles down on every worry people have about him just about every day."

Borges is counting on less enthusiasm for Clinton keeping Democratic turnout lower than it was for President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. If Republicans can turn out the crowd that voted in the 2016 primary, even those who supported Kasich, they can defeat Clinton, Borges said.

"Get the Republicans to the polls, and I'll take my chances," he said. "They'll vote for the entire ticket."

Staff writers Sharon Coolidge and Jessie Balmert contributed.

Editor's note: Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are disliked by a majority of Ohioans. Wording in an earlier version of this story was unclear.