For many other voters, though, Clinton would also be a huge departure from business as usual. Forty-three* men have served as president since 1789. The election of a woman would be historic.

“The symbolic importance of the fact that there’s going to be a woman on the ballot for president shouldn’t be underestimated,” says Ruth Mandel of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

So far the candidates have carried out what might be called a war of warnings. Trump calls his opponent “crooked Hillary.” That’s a reference to controversies like her use of a private email server to conduct government business during her time as secretary of state. He also dismisses her as too weak to deal effectively with ISIS and China and not economically savvy enough to create jobs.

Clinton says Trump is a bully whose take-no-prisoners style and weak grasp of foreign policy make him “temperamentally unfit” for the presidency. She says his plan to build a wall to seal off the border with Mexico (and force Mexico to pay for it) is ridiculous. And she says his proposal to ban foreign Muslims from the U.S. to prevent terrorist attacks “goes against everything we stand for as a country founded on religious freedom.”

One problem neither candidate faces is lack of name recognition. Clinton was a lawyer until her husband, Bill Clinton, became president in 1993. After eight years as first lady, she was elected in 2000 to the U.S. Senate from New York. She lost the 2008 Democratic presidential primary to Barack Obama, then served as his secretary of state for four years.

Trump is a New Yorker who inherited a real estate business from his father and expanded it into a high-profile global brand of Trump hotels, office buildings, resorts, and golf courses. In 2004, he became a major TV personality, starring in the hit reality show The Apprentice.

But as the old saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt. Voters know Trump and Clinton, but many just don’t like them. According to a recent Gallup poll, 64 percent view Trump unfavorably. Clinton fares a little better, with 54 percent viewing her unfavorably. It’s rare for the two major party nominees to have such high negatives going into the general election. Whichever of them can convince enough undecided voters will probably prevail on November 8. That’ll be especially important in battleground states like Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania (see map).

