By Laura A. Bischoff, Dayton Daily News
COLUMBUS – When Ohioans begin voting next month for the highest office in the land, hundreds of thousands of them will hold their noses and check the box for a candidate they don’t like, don’t trust and don’t respect.
A poll conducted for a consortium of Ohio news organizations, including this one, found the candidates have reached a level of unpopularity that may be unprecedented in the history of American politics.
“Nobody has ever seen two major party candidates that are this unpopular,” said John C. Green, a political scientist and director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, which conducted the poll. “Nobody has ever seen anything quite like this.”
Sixty-two percent of Ohioans don’t like Republican Donald Trump and 54 percent don’t like Democrat Hillary Clinton, according to the poll, which also found a deeply trenched-in electorate: Few people on either side expect their opinions to change.
Large segments of Ohio voters view Clinton as an untrustworthy liar and they see Trump as a bully who lacks a filter, the poll found.
“I don’t like either one of them, but I despise Donald Trump so I will vote for Hillary,” said Susan Plake of Huber Heights. “He’s hot-headed. He’s offensive, especially toward women. I don’t like his policies on immigration.”
Liz Minotti, a fourth-year student at Ohio State University from the Columbus area, said she doesn’t like either candidate either.
“Trump might be a little bit better than Clinton,” she said. “But he has no filter and says things that should not be said…I really have no idea who I’m going to vote for.”
Of Ohioans who like Clinton, 30 percent said she is competent, 25 percent said she is responsible and 22 percent said she is caring. But of those who dislike her, 72 percent said lack of trust was the biggest reason and 11 percent said she is irresponsible.
Clinton campaign senior advisor Jake Sullivan said support for Clinton typically rises once she is in office and working. He noted that in 2000, Clinton won a small number of New York counties in her race for U.S. Senate, but six years later she was re-elected with 67 percent of the vote and won 58 of 62 counties.
“As first lady and as senator and as secretary of state she enjoyed pretty broad bipartisan support and I believe that if she is elected in November, come January when she is actually going about the business of governing and helping the American people that people on both sides of the aisle as well as independents will see that and respond to it,” Sullivan said.
In the poll, Clinton scored higher for competency than Trump but did not receive high marks for her foreign policy experience, perhaps a result of the ongoing scandals involving her tenure as secretary of state.
Trump supporters give him high marks for trust and like his promise to build a wall along the Mexico border and deport illegal immigrants. But those promises are also cited by critics for not liking him.
Trump also loses support from people who don’t like the tone of his campaign and find many of his statements offensive.
Of those who don’t like him, 37 percent called him irresponsible, 22 percent said he is disrespectful and 12 percent said he is incompetent.
When asked why Trump is so unpopular, Bob Paduchik, Ohio state director for Donald J. Trump For President, Inc., wrote: “What makes Mr. Trump popular with many Americans is his direct style of communication which is not typical for most career politicians. People can believe Mr. Trump because he says what he thinks, unlike Secretary Clinton whom the vast majority of voters think is untrustworthy.”
Many respondents had words of praise for the candidates. Those who like Trump say he is honest, tells it like it is and isn’t a politician. Those who like Clinton say she is experienced, caring, smart and policy-oriented with a commitment to social justice and women’s issues.
But the animosity on the other side of the divide runs deep. Clinton critics who responded to the survey called her arrogant, shady, unethical, dishonest and a liar.
Trump critics called him volatile, petulant, insolent, abrasive, pompous, arrogant, rude and more.
Andrew Rockway, program director for the non-partisan Jefferson Center in Akron, which has done extensive interviewing with voters, said there is a high level of frustration this year— about the tone of the campaign, about the perceived lack of reliable information and specifics from the candidates, about the way the election is being covered by the media and about the candidates themselves.
Once voters develop an impression of a candidate, it’s hard to change it. When asked if Trump could make a shift on issues that would cause them to view him differently, 73 percent of the poll respondents said no. Asked the same question about Clinton, 77 percent answered no.
Green sounded a warning about what the candidates’ unpopularity means for the country.
“Whoever moves into the White House in January is going to come in with a very low level of legitimacy,” he said. “That will surely make it much more difficult to govern.”
The poll is part of a year-long Your Vote Ohio project in which Ohio news organizations are collaborating to bring you stories to advance democracy and reclaim your voice in American politics.
The poll of 1,089 Ohioans was conducted by the Center for Marketing and Opinion Research and the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.