The year of the hated:

[Valin]

Washington Post:

David Weigel

May 8 2016

 

In the end, it was the voters of Indiana last week who effectively gave the country the outcome that had loomed for months. The 2016 election is likely to pit Hillary Clinton, who is disliked by a majority of voters, against Donald Trump, disliked by a greater majority of voters.

 

If the rise of Trump has no obvious precedent, neither does an election like this. Clinton, whose buoyant favorable ratings in the State Department convinced some Democrats that she could win easily, is now viewed as unfavorably as George W. Bush was in his close 2004 reelection bid. Trump is even less liked, with negative ratings among nonwhite voters not seen since the 1964 campaign of Barry Goldwater.

 

“In the history of polling, we’ve basically never had a candidate viewed negatively by half of the electorate,” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) wrote in a widely shared note that asked someone, anyone, to mount a third-party run. “There are dumpster fires in my town more popular than these two ‘leaders.’ ”

 

According to RealClearPolitics averages, Trump has an unfavorable rating of 65 percent. Clinton has 55 percent.

 

You wouldn’t know it from talking to each candidate’s supporters, who see only one reality — they hate the other choice — and who seem oblivious that much of the nation is defining this election by watching with dismay and deciding whether to bother to participate.

 

(Snip)

 

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H/T Democratic Underground