Nate Silver Analysis Finds Trump Most Unpopular GOP Candidate With Independents, Democrats

Over at Five Thirty Eight Politics, Nate Silver has an excellent article in which he examines the popularity of the Republican presidential candidates over the past six weeks. Here is what Silver found when looking at Gallup polling data in which voters are asked whether they viewed candidates as "favorable" or "unfavorable":



While Trump's favorability ratings have improved among Republicans over the last several weeks, he still is more unpopular than any Republican candidate not named Jeb Bush, Chris Christie or John Kasich, all card carrying members of the Establishment.  Meanwhile Trump rates by far the most unpopular candidate with independents, sporting a -27 rating, more than half of Bush's -13 rating.  All other GOP candidates are in single digits, both positive and negative.  Meanwhile Trump has a -70 rating with Democrats, a figure almost double Cruz's negative rating of -37.  While Trump no doubt appeals to some Democrats and independents, when looking at the total picture the Silver analysis show that those voters are less inclined to support him than the other Republican candidates.

Silver then expanded his analysis to see if the results would be duplicated with other pollsters.  Using favorable-unfavorable poll information collected by the Huffington Post, he finds Trump leading the pack at -25 followed by Jeb Bush -22, Rick Santorum -22, Rand Paul -16, Christie -13, Mike Huckabee -12, Carly Fiorina -8, John Kasich -7, Ted Cruz -7, Marco Rubio -1, Ben Carson 0. 

Before the Democrats start celebrating the unpopularity of the Republican candidates, they should consider that their own leading candidate, Hillary Clinton, sports a -8 rating among the voters.  The only presidential candidate with a positive rating is Bernie Sanders at +3.