Is Trump Popular Enough to Win

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore, Flickr Creative Commons, https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/
Flickr Creative Commons Image 5440393641_2892f718d7_b
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore, Flickr Creative Commons, https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/

Amid headlines stating that Republican attacks are slowing Donald Trump, that Both Cruz and  Rubio lead Trump in one-on-one matchups and asking if  Trump is losing steam, the new  to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that two-thirds of Americans don’t like the Donald:

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He’s got a constituency hovering around half of the GOP, though most Republican voters say they would be okay with voting for him the general election.

But winning most Republican voters or even GOP-leaning independents who show up in primaries isn’t enough. How in the world is Trump going to win a general election if two-thirds of people don’t like him and 56 percent feel that way “strongly?” (By contrast, a slight majority — 52 percent — say they don’t like Hillary Clinton, including 41 percent “strongly.”)

Three-fourths of self-described moderates and 64 percent of self-described independents view Trump unfavorably. That’s just not a recipe for actually being elected president.

[. . .]

Perhaps General Election Trump will win over people who didn’t previously like him just like Republican Primary Trump has done? Perhaps people don’t need to actually like Trump in order to vote for him? Perhaps they will hate Clinton even more eventually?

In his Washington Post article, Aaron Blake’s conclusion is who knows. He also warns that analysts are now reluctant to declare that Trump has no chance of winning the presidency. They have been burned before.

In Philip Bump’s piece in the “The Fix,” he suggests that because the one-on-one ABC News/Washington Post poll hypothetical matchups between Cruz and Trump and Rubio and Trump, both Senators beat Trump. Cruz by a comfortable 13 point margin and Rubio by a much tighter six point margin:

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  • Ted Cruz – 54%
  • Donald Trump 41%
  • Marco Rubio – 51%
  • Donald Trump 45%

According to Blake, Trump’s unpopularity numbers haven’t been this bad in Post-ABC polling since Trump’s June campaign launch. Since then, Trump managed to convince enough voters in a crowded field to vote for him to make the Donald the front runner.  Sadly, Trump did that with divisive rhetoric that turns off much of the rest of the voters. So much so that Frank Newport, Gallup’s Editor-in-Chief, reported the Donald is the most unpopular candidate of either party ever.

Take the Post-ABC poll with a large grain of salt. It was conducted between March 3-6 and has a margin of error for the Republican results of plus or minus 5.5 percent.

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