Trump, Clinton Could Be Most Disliked Nominees in Decades
If Americans don't change their current views, the match-up between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton could be a race between the two most disliked presidential nominees in at least three decades.
The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll has Trump with a 60 percent unfavorable rating and Clinton at 53 percent unfavorable.
Should the two front-runners become the nominees and their current ratings remain roughly the same through November, this presidential election could have two candidates with the highest unfavorable ratings since 1984.
Since 1984, according ABC News/Washington Post polls, the presidential nominee with the highest unfavorable rating was George H.W. Bush in his 1992 re-election bid, when he lost to Bill Clinton. He had a 53 percent unfavorable rating - the same as Hillary Clinton's current rating.
The only other major candidate to garner an unfavorable rating higher than 50 percent was former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 2012, at 52 percent.
No Democratic candidate or nominee has had an unfavorable rating above 50 percent until Hillary Clinton in this election.
And no presidential candidate from either party who has secured the nomination has reached Trump-level unfavorable ratings.
The highest unfavorable rating in the past three decades belonged to David Duke, the former KKK grand wizard who announced his support of Trump earlier in this campaign, during his 1992 presidential run. He was viewed unfavorably by 69 percent of Americans, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll in February of that year. But he did not win his party's nomination.
Other Republicans candidates who did not become nominees and had high unfavorable ratings include Pat Buchanan in 2000, with 60 percent, Ross Perot in 1996, with 58 percent, Jeb Bush this year, with 58 percent, and Newt Gingrich in 2012, with 56 percent.
