Nobody likes Donald Trump. Not even white men

Three-quarters of women view him unfavorably

(Reuters)

Donald Trump would be “the least popular major party nominee in modern times,” the headline on the front of the Washington Post headline blares. That sounds pretty bad! But if you dig into the demographic breakdown of the Post’s new analysis of this month’s polling, which looks at Trump’s favorability across a range of voter groups, it looks even worse.

These numbers are simply amazing. Trump is viewed unfavorably by at least 80 percent of some of the groups that Republican strategists had hoped the GOP might improve among: young voters and Latinos. He’s viewed unfavorably by three out of four moderates. That GOP autopsy into what went wrong in 2012 has been torn to shreds and scattered to the winds from the top of Trump Tower.

Just as bad, this new polling further undercuts the already weak case for an implausible Trump victory: the idea that he can win by making surprise inroads in relatively white states in the industrial Midwest, thus riding a wave of working class white anger into the White House. Trump is viewed unfavorably by a narrow majority of non-college whites (52 percent).

What’s more, these new numbers also suggest other complications to Trump’s working-class-white strategy that we’ve discussed before: Trump seems uniquely positioned to alienate white women and white college graduates to an untold degree. This renders the working-class-white strategy’s math even more far fetched.

In our polling, Trump is viewed unfavorably by 68 percent of white women and 74 percent of white college graduates. If a lot of white women view Trump unfavorably, that would complicate his chances of over-performing among working class whites. And if Trump under-performs among college educated whites (and alienates nonwhites to an untold degree), he might need truly enormous margins among working class whites (who, as noted above, already view Trump unfavorably) to make up the difference.

Can Trump win by driving up tremendous, great, terrific, and huge margins among white men? Well, even they view Trump unfavorably, by 51-47.

These numbers illustrate just how badly Trump has already hurt himself among many voter groups — indeed, among pretty much all of them! Of course, it would be folly to suggest that these numbers can’t change. And some Democrats are urging a tougher approach to Trump right now, to make sure they don’t. But that brings us to our next item.

Copyright: Washington Post