The Chart That Proves Donald Trump Has No Chance In A General Election

The Chart That Proves Donald Trump Has No Chance In A General Election

Whether Donald Trump wins the Republican primary or not, he’ll never be the President of the United States. Well, I shouldn’t say never. Hillary could go to jail, a meteor could strike, space aliens could show up — it’s probably wise to never say never. On the other hand, it’s also never a good idea to go into a presidential election needing a miracle to win.

trump duh

Despite the fact that Donald Trump talks about his poll numbers incessantly, nobody seems to be pointing out the fact that his favorability/unfavorability poll numbers with the general public are cataclysmically bad. If the fact that a poll shows that Donald Trump is ahead in some certain state is relevant, then the fact that other polls show he’s completely unelectable would seem to be relevant as well.

How bad are Donald Trump’s numbers with the general public? This bad.

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Donald Trump has the same numbers that Jimmy Carter did early on in 1980. As you can see from the chart, Carter did improve his numbers a bit by election time, but he still lost in one of the biggest landslides in American history; 489-49.

For most of the candidates, their favorability ratings this early don’t matter that much because a large percentage of the public hasn’t formed an opinion. In Trump’s case, more people hold an unfavorable opinion of him than of Nixon AFTER Watergate. When 91% of people already have an opinion of you and 58% don’t like you, you are as close to dead in the water as it gets for a politician.

But, you say what about Trump’s rabid fans? What about the large crowds?

Well, Ron Paul drew big crowds and had rabid fans as well. In one sense, they were even more enthusiastic than Trump supporters because they also ponied up a lot of money while Trump’s fund raising has been mediocre. Unfortunately for Ron Paul, he couldn’t bring in enough people beyond his diehard supporters to win a general election. Donald Trump has a bigger fanbase than Paul. It may even be big enough for him to win the primaries, but he’d be in even worse shape than Paul in a general election because so many people already know who he is and don’t like him.

I don’t think Donald Trump is a bad guy. If he’s our guy, I will vote for him and do what I can to get him elected, but I think it’s over before it gets started if Trump’s the nominee.

PS: If you want to see how the whole field’s numbers stack up, here they are courtesy of a liberal statistics blog, 538. However, the rest of the field isn’t as well known as Trump and Jeb and when the public doesn’t know a candidate, it tends to default to the negative. That makes the numbers much less relevant for everyone else.

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