One in Four Voters Are Double-Haters, Rejecting Trump and Biden
(Bloomberg) -- The ranks of the double-haters — voters who say they don’t like either major party presidential candidate — are at a historic high and make up one-quarter of the electorate, according to a new analysis from Pew Research Center.
That’s nearly twice as many as at this point in 2020.
Double-Haters at Historic High | Percentage of voters saying they have unfavorable opinion of both the Democratic and Republican candidate for president
Double-haters were a key factor in Donald Trump’s upset win in 2016, when they broke for the Republican candidate over Democrat Hillary Clinton. But President Joe Biden won many of those voters over on his way to winning the White House in 2020.
Biden and Trump are taking roughly equal measures of these disillusioned voters in battleground states, with Biden winning 25% to Trump’s 22%, a May Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll shows.
Third Parties Have Appeal for Double-Haters | Candidate preference among battleground state voters
But the biggest threat to Biden and Trump is that voters turned off by them will simply stay home — or find refuge in an independent candidate like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is polling at 24% among those voters in the Bloomberg/Morning Consult survey. Other third-party candidates are taking a combined 12%.
Growing political polarization is driving the unpopularity. The Pew analysis found that presidential candidates are only slightly less popular within their own party than they were three decades ago, but that voters of the opposing party are much more negative.
Both Parties' Candidates More Unpopular | Favorable views of each major-party candidate as of May/June of election year
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