Donald Trump is expected to clean up in New York next week, as polls show the celebrity mogul holding a hefty lead over Ted Cruz and John Kasich. The numbers suggest that Trump is on track to eclipse the state's "winner take all" (WTA) threshold of 50 percent-plus-one, which would reap 14 delegates, then the remaining 81 delegates are allocated proportionally by Congressional District (each with the same WTA trigger). If and when he dominates his home state, Trump will do so without the votes of
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In fairness to Cohen, his boss has also been a Democrat for most of his adult life, and basically still is. This guy sheepishly admits that he can't pull the lever for "Mr. Trump," then quickly assures the entertained anchors that Trump has nothing to worry about. Not in New York's primary, perhaps -- but as we've been explaining for months, the general election is a very different animal. The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that the Republican frontrunner remains historically unpopular. Last month in this series, Trump's unfavorable rating clocked in at a breathtaking 67 percent. After weeks of acting "more presidential" or something, he's rebounded to an unfavorable rating of...exactly 67 percent again:
WaPo/ABC poll: Trump holds steady at 67% unfavorable rating, w/ 53% expressing "strongly unfavorable" view. https://t.co/EXSCRFgl9U
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) April 14, 2016
That 'strong unfavorable' number, a 53 percent majority, is equal to Ted Cruz's (relatively strong, but objectively weak) overall unfavorable percentage. The Texas Senator's 'strong unfavorable' number is 20 points lower than Trump's. The Donald earns a thumbs-down from 42 percent of Republicans, with less than half of GOP-aligned women holding favorable views of their party's potential nominee. Among important swing groups, Trump is
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Trump’s exceptionally high negative ratings are driven by negative impressions from across the political spectrum, but pose different levels of danger to him in a general election setting. For instance, his 87 percent unfavorable rating among self-identified Democrats is not very worrisome for his candidacy, as Republican presidential nominees rarely win much support among Democratic voters in general elections. Yet Trump also continues to receive strongly negative ratings among several key voting blocs that are at least partly up for grabs this year. Two-thirds of political independents have an unfavorable view of Trump, as do 74 percent of Americans under age 40; 75 percent of women, and 81 percent of Hispanics. Majorities in each group see Trump in a “strongly unfavorable” light, exceeding intense negative ratings of Cruz or Kasich by at least 20 points.
Fully 64 percent of women view Trump unfavorably, which helps explain why he trails Hillary Clinton by double digits head-to-head. These polls start to become meaningfully predictive in April according to historical trends, and I've argued that both Trump and Clinton's universal name identification renders these hypothetical match-up questions less hypothetical than usual. Don't forget, surveys have shown Trump struggling against Hillary in places like, um, Utah and Mississippi. Joe Scarborough (who once called Trump's belated and contradictory disavowal of David Duke and the KKK 'disqualifying')
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