Hillary Clinton Cheese Barn

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton takes a photo with a man outside Grandpa's Cheese Barn in Ashland on the way from Cleveland to Columbus.

(Andrew Harnik, Associated Press)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Recent polls have cast neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump as a clear front-runner in Ohio, making handicapping the November election here difficult.

But the polls consistently have been much more definitive in demonstrating the following: most Ohioans don't like either candidate.

In a continuation of a yearlong trend, three major Buckeye State polls released in July found at least 51 percent of respondents said they have an unfavorable opinion of both candidates.

A July 21 poll by Suffolk University -- released before the Democratic National Convention -- found 70 percent of Ohioans don't think Clinton is "honest and trustworthy." Another 66 percent said the same of Trump, with another 64 percent describing Trump as "reckless" for good measure.

Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges has described this year's presidential elections in terms that don't exactly pull at one's heart strings.

"We may have picked the one person who might actually be able to lose to Hilary Clinton," Borges told the Clermont Chamber of Commerce in a June 9 speech, according to the Clermont Sun. "Unfortunately, they picked the one person who might actually be able to lose to Donald Trump. So we'll have a very interesting sort of race to the bottom here."

So, what might a "race to the bottom" look like?

The candidates will go negative -- really negative

Because both candidates are unpopular, Lauren Copeland, a political scientist at Baldwin Wallace University, said she expects this year's election will be framed around fear of the other side.

"I think what this means is that many people are going to be motivated to vote for what they perceive to be the lesser of two evils, which leads to a second point: both sides will do everything they can to drive the opposition's negatives higher," she said.

To do that, Copeland expects both candidates will attack the other on their personal character.

"I think we'll see Trump attacking Clinton not so much for policy decisions, but for being dishonest and corrupt. And since Clinton can't nail down Trump on policy, she and her campaign largely are attacking him for being unfit for office," she said.

Clinton and her supporters have released a barrage of anti-Trump TV ads, with more likely to come. A July 20 analysis by NBC News found the Clinton campaign and Priorities USA, the main pro-Clinton Super PAC, had spent a combined $152 million on TV ads, mostly targeted in nine key battleground states including Ohio.

Here is one anti-Trump ad, recently released by Priorities USA:

The Trump campaign has yet to buy any TV ads, and mostly has launched his attacks against Clinton through free media -- calling her "crooked," "unhinged," "unbalanced," etc. -- on his Twitter account, at campaign rallies and in national television interviews.

But a variety of outside groups, including the National Rifle Association and a pair of pro-Trump super PACs, have spent $14 million this year opposing Clinton, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Here's one ad that began airing in Ohio and elsewhere recently that was produced by Rebuilding America now, a pro-Trump super PAC:

After struggling to raise money, Trump in July reported a fundraising haul that rivaled Clinton's, suggesting that he could end up taking to the airwaves soon.

David Niven, who wrote speeches for then-Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's presidential campaign, said Clinton's early ads have been somewhat mild, simply quoting Trump in his own words, to try to argue that Trump isn't ready for the job.

This isn't uncommon in politics -- Ronald Reagan successfully did this to Walter Mondale in the 1984 election, Niven said.

But if history is any guide, Clinton has a few more cards up her sleeve, he said.

"That's just a teaser," said Niven, who now teaches politics classes at the University of Cincinnati. "That's just the start of where this thing will go. If this thing is close, it will inevitably end with Clinton saying Trump will blow up the world. There's no other way this will end. For now, we're going to hear about Trump in his own words, but if it's close, this campaign ends [with the image of] a mushroom cloud."

Borges, the Ohio GOP chairman, said Clinton's unpopularity leaves her with limited options.

"She has no choice but to go negative," he told cleveland.com, "because she's just an atrocious candidate."

Even if turnout doesn't lag, voter trust still might

While negative campaigning is nothing new, the unpopularity of both Clinton and Trump has the equal potential to mobilize voters, or turn them off so much that they stay home, according to Kyle Kondik, who analyzes elections at the University of Virginia Center of Politics.

"I don't have an answer. But I could see it going either way," he said.

Copeland, the Baldwin Wallace political scientist, said negative campaigning will help mobilize partisan supporters of each candidate, but it's unclear how voter turnout might be affected as a whole.

"I do think that negative ads are more memorable," she said. "But I think they also contribute to cynicism surrounding politics, and the sense that no matter who anyone votes for, nothing is going to change," she said. "And that's really problematic for a democratic country."