In 2016’s race to the bottom, Donald Trump is going to find out if you can become president when two-thirds of Americans don’t like you — and a majority can’t stand you.

Recent polls have showed Trump’s unfavorable rating spiking again, after a brief improvement last month. That’s also coincided with a slide in national horse-race polls, which now unanimously show Hillary Clinton leading the presumptive Republican nominee. Clinton is also more unpopular than past nominees, but her negatives are neither as wide nor as deep as the broadly detested Trump.


Trump is setting modern records for political toxicity — at least for a major-party candidate this far out from an election. Seventy percent of Americans surveyed in an ABC News/Washington Post poll out this week had an unfavorable opinion of Trump, up 10 points over the past month. The poll showed Trump’s favorable rating cratering at 29 percent, down from 37 percent last month.

The numbers were similar in a Bloomberg Politics poll: Trump’s favorable rating is just 31 percent, with 66 percent viewing him unfavorably. That’s only marginally better than in March, when 29 percent viewed Trump favorably, and 68 percent had an unfavorable opinion.

Gallup’s latest figures show Trump at 31 percent favorable/63 percent unfavorable – significantly worse than Clinton’s 41 percent favorable/54 percent unfavorable.

Those high unfavorables extend to the battleground states: A Marquette Law School poll out Wednesday found 64 percent of Wisconsin voters view Trump unfavorably — compared to only 26 percent who have a favorable opinion of him.

But it’s not just the overall unfavorable numbers — it’s the intensity of the antipathy toward Trump, and the lack of enthusiasm for him. In the ABC News/Washington Post poll, 56 percent of respondents had a “strongly unfavorable” opinion of Trump, compared to just 15 percent who had a “strongly favorable” opinion. In the Bloomberg poll, 51 percent had a “very unfavorable” opinion of Trump, with only 11 percent having a “very favorable” opinion.

Voters with a strongly unfavorable opinion are "obviously more difficult to move than people who are undecided or just unfavorable," said Quinnipiac University pollster Peter Brown. "The stronger the dislike, the more difficult it is to change that person’s view."

Clinton’s image ratings are also “upside-down” — but compared with Trump, she’s more than likable enough. The ABC News/Washington Post poll pegs her favorable rating at 43 percent (25 percent strongly favorable), with 55 percent viewing her unfavorably (39 percent strongly unfavorable). That’s a new low-water mark for Clinton, though it’s still only a slight decline since the campaign began. (The Bloomberg poll was similar for Clinton: 43 percent favorable, 54 percent unfavorable.)

Clinton is seeking to move those numbers in her direction. On Thursday, the presumptive Democratic nominee launched a series of swing-state television ads, some aimed at boost her image and others hitting Trump.

Trump’s unpopularity is without historical peer in the modern era of presidential campaigns. Mitt Romney averaged a 46-percent unfavorable rating in mid-June 2012, according to the HuffPost Pollster database. John McCain’s unfavorable rating four years prior was only 40 percent, and more voters had a positive opinion of the Arizona senator than a negative one. In June 2004, then-Sen. John Kerry had a 58-percent favorable rating, according to Gallup, with only 35 percent viewing him unfavorably. Also from Gallup: Al Gore, in late June 2000, had a 52-percent favorable rating, and Bob Dole had a 55-percent favorable rating in June 1996.

Then-President George H.W. Bush is the last candidate to have a majority-unfavorable rating in June of an election year (51 percent unfavorable in June 1992), according to Gallup. But Bill Clinton’s unfavorable rating that year (47 percent) was also high. In May 1988, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll, Michael Dukakis had an otherworldly 67-percent favorable rating, with just 10 percent viewing him unfavorably.

The Dukakis figures offer a historical warning: The former Massachusetts governor had a significant lead over Bush entering the summer of 1988, but Bush overtook and soundly defeated Dukakis later that year. By early October, Dukakis’ stellar image rating had been slashed in half: More voters in a CBS News/New York Times poll by that time viewed Dukakis unfavorably than favorably.

But Gallup editor in chief Frank Newport sees some parallels in the 1992 campaign. Unfavorable opinions of Bush reached as high as 57 percent “in the fall, when he was in the heat of combat,” Newport said.

And Ross Perot, the independent Texas billionaire who won nearly 19 percent of the vote, saw his negatives enter Trump territory, Newport said.

“There were times when Perot had a 66-percent unfavorable rating,” said Newport, “which is comparable to where we have Trump right now.”

Bill Clinton, too, had high negatives in that race until the Democratic convention in New York, which began his turnaround. Newport said it was too soon to speculate whether Trump, a master showman, could use the Cleveland GOP convention next month to engineer a similar turnaround. But he suggested voters’ perceptions of Trump could be too baked-in for the Republican nominee to pull it off.

Clinton “had a remarkably positive convention that summer and suddenly became wildly popular,” Newport said. “Perhaps you could argue Clinton was a little newer on the scene in ’92 than Trump is now.”

Brown, the Quinnipiac pollster, attributed a line to former Democratic National Committee chairman Paul Kirk: "You never get a second chance to make a first impression."

"Will the United States elect a president whom more than half the people view unfavorably?" Brown said. "Today, the answer to that question looks like it might be yes."