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| Why Donald Trump Isn't A Real Candidate, In One Chart. Written in June 2015 by Nate Silver |
| 2016-05-29 |
| At FiveThirtyEight, we like to celebrate outliers. LeBron James's Cleveland Cavaliers may end up losing in the NBA Finals, but James's performance has been outlandishly good. In the same vein, I want to congratulate Donald Trump, who reportedly will declare today that he is running for president. Trump is the anti-LeBron ‐ popularity is performance in politics, and Trump is the first candidate in modern presidential primary history to begin the campaign with a majority of his own party disliking him. A whopping 57 percent of Republicans have an unfavorable view of Trump, according to an average of the three most recent polls. That beats former record holder Pat Buchanan, who had a 43 percent unfavorable rating at this point in the 2000 election cycle.1 Buchanan, of course, ended up running as an independent. Taking into account name recognition, Trump's net favorability rating (favorable minus unfavorable) of -32 percentage points stands out for its pure terribleness at this point in the campaign. Like his unfavorable rating, it is by far the worst of the 106 presidential candidates since 1980 who are in our database. For this reason alone, Trump has a better chance of cameoing in another "Home Alone" movie with Macaulay Culkin ‐ or playing in the NBA Finals ‐ than winning the Republican nomination. Warms my heart to know that heartless, ridiculing pricks like these are wrong. |
| Posted by:Elmavish Panda1401 |
| #4 Probabilities are not guarantees. As Mr. Silver has since rediscovered. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2016-05-29 13:55 |
#3 For this reason alone, Trump has a better chance of cameoing (sic) in another “Home Alone” movie with Macaulay Culkin — or playing in the NBA Finals — than winning the Republican nomination. Nailed another one, Nate. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2016-05-29 11:56 |
| #2 Nate Silver's 15 minutes are up, he just has not run the numbers yet... |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2016-05-29 11:43 |
| #1 He's not wrong. Trump's negatives are sky high. Even worse than Hillary's, and, excluding Trump, Hillary's are the worst in our lifetime. Nate predicted that Trump had a snowball's chance in Hell of getting the nomination. Also true. That it happened anyway is something we will all be thinking and talking about for some time to come, no matter what happens in November. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2016-05-29 10:54 |