Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 06:09 pm
Move over Donald Trump. Sure, you may lead the polls. You may even have, as Gallup shows, the highest favorable rating among Republican candidates at 55 percent – Huckabee is next at 53 – but you also have the highest unfavorable rating (37), with Chris Christie your only close pursuer at 34.
This is what Trump is trumpeting going into tonight’s debate:
"@FrankLuntz: Trump is leading with almost every major group of Republican primary voters. http://t.co/fwIZR6XhYP"
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— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 6, 2015
However, this is the cold, hard reality he might be less interested in facing: Based on net favorable ratings, Republicans view not Trump, but Marco Rubio and Scott Walker most favorably.
As Gallup explains:
The net favorable measure, which simply subtracts the percentage who have an unfavorable opinion from the percentage who have a favorable opinion, is a useful, shorthand way of determining a candidate’s relative popularity among their fellow Republicans nationwide. This sentiment is not necessarily related to the candidates’ name recognition. Both Walker and Carson, for example, are familiar to only about half of Republicans, yet are viewed quite positively by those who know them. On the other hand, Donald Trump and Christie are much better known, but have well-below-average net favorable scores, with Trump sixth from the bottom on that dimension and Christie third from the bottom.
It is no surprise that Donald Trump is the most visible candidate in Republican ranks at 92 percent. Besides being a reality TV star, he’s got the biggest mouth. He attacks everyone. He has always known how to get the attention focused on him.
And look at his lackluster opponents. The Republican presidential field for 2016 is one of the motliest ever. The next highest familiarity rating is Jeb Bush, and that’s not because of “Jeb!” but because of “Bush!” – which isn’t necessarily a good thing for the pseudo-Hispanic former Florida governor.
Chris Christie is dead in the water, his bullying attitude earning him a +1 net favorable rating, almost last among the sixteen candidates and above only George Pataki and Lindsey Graham. Not the neighborhood the former New Jersey Wunderkind hoped to occupy, you can be sure. Maybe wanting to punch teachers offends even conservatives.
However, as Gallup demonstrates, “favorable” only gets you so far if too few people know who you are.
Conversely, familiarity does not tell the entire tale. If, as Gallup’s analysis shows, Kasich, Carson and Walker stand to gain the most by making themselves better known before a national audience, Trump will be the guy at center stage who draws the most attention, and therefore faces the challenge of not making himself even less favorable to Republican voters.
His destiny is in his own hands, unlike that of Perry and Jindal, who, though well-liked by the base, weren’t rated high enough by Fox News to be given a chance to better their odds. They get the children’s table tonight instead.
Only nine of these other candidates will get the chance to make themselves better known tonight. These men also have the chance to make themselves more better liked – or more hated. The same is true of the now acknowledged frontrunner, Donald Trump, who will never, ever talk about how unfavorably he is viewed – by anyone.
Trump leads the polls, but he is also at the top of the list when it comes to who is viewed least favorably. Can he change that tonight?
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
