Donald Trump's 'unfavourables' are at a historic high, despite his chest-beating

ANALYSIS

• Trump says women who have abortions should be punished

Washington: It's hard to exaggerate what's going down here.

The Republicans, the party of Lincoln that controlled the White House for a total of 88 years, are on the verge of self-destruction over a man who might sneak away with the GOP nomination – but who almost certainly will never be elected president of the US.

Donald Trump's unfavourable ratings are at their highest. Photo: AP

Donald Trump's campaign has been truly spectacular. Along the way, a procession of pundits have had to eat their words as Trump easily cleared hurdle after hurdle, at each of which we were assured the New York mogul would trip up.

The sleaze, the vapid policies and the upending of pretty well every known political convention have so monopolised media attention that all the talk is of an unstoppable juggernaut. And in its wake, chaos; far from rallying around policies and tactics, party factions have taken to the trenches, bitterly disputing the meaning of policies that for decades had been carved in stone.

Lost in the dust is any real assessment of Trump's appeal beyond the confines of the GOP. Kicking over the furniture as one in a field that initially had 16 contenders and which now has been whittled to three, doesn't require great popularity.

Protesters hold signs and wear homemade shirts in Washington on Monday. More Americans think unfavourably of Trump now than at the start of this year. Photo: Bloomberg

For now, all eyes are on the battle for delegate numbers for the Republican convention in Cleveland in July. But with the likelihood that it'll be a brokered convention – that is that the nominee will be decided by votes on the floor of the convention – the unflattering reality of Trump's opinion poll numbers will come into play.

Unfavourable rating hits 63 per cent

Consider – for all his free media, more Americans think unfavourably of Trump now than at the start of this year. Back then just 37 per cent thought favourably of him, and 57 per cent unfavourably, according to the Huffington Post average of national polls. This week, that favourable rating has shrunk to 31 per cent; his unfavourable rating is now peaking at 63 per cent.

A supporter holds a sign backing Donald Trump at a rally in Arizona. Photo: AP

So for all Trump's huff and puff about how well he does in polls, his "unfavourables" are historically high for a would-be nominee and party unity, always essential for the winning side, is in tatters pretty much because of his barroom brawler approach to politics.

James Downie, of The Washington Post, sounded a note of caution when Trump trailed Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton by just three points in the Real Clear Politics average of national polls on March 2 – four weeks on, that gap has widened to more than 11 points in Clinton's favour.

Given Trump's stump spiel on migration, it's difficult to see how he could improve on the appeal of the losing GOP candidate Mitt Romney in 2012 – when the Hispanic vote split 71-27 in favour of the successful Barack Obama. In some current polls, Hispanic voters dislike Trump at rates as high as 80 per cent.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in a CNN interview with Anderson Cooper on Tuesday. Photo: AP

David Byler, election analyst at Real Clear Politics, concludes that Trump has an insurmountable demographic challenge. He writes: "Trump might be able to turn out and win working-class whites at greater rates than past GOP nominees, but his less than sensitive rhetoric on race and immigration, his populist positions on taxes and trade and his general bombast would likely cause other large groups [e.g., Latinos, African Americans, college-educated whites] to vote against him at higher than usual rates."

Divisive among Republican voters

​Nate Silver, who emerged as the boy genius of election number crunchers when he correctly called the outcome in 49 or the 50 states in the 2008 election, worries that inordinate attention on the intensifying brawl between Trump and the GOP establishment is masking another conflict – a good number of Republican voters do not like the idea of Trump being their standard-bearer in November.

Bethany Mead holds a sign on the street in Appleton, Wisconsin, before a Trump rally on Wednesday. Photo: AP

"He's also extremely divisive among Republican voters, much more so than a typical front runner," Silver blogs. "In exit polls so far, only 49 per cent of Republican voters say they would be satisfied with Trump as their nominee – remarkable considering Trump's lead in votes and convention delegates.

"By comparison, 79 per cent of Democrats this year have said they would be satisfied with Hillary Clinton as their nominee, while 62 per cent have said so of Bernie Sanders."

Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen is caustic in crunching the numbers to demolish Trump's claim to be the voice of a "silent majority" of Americans. Writing after the March 22 primaries in Arizona and Utah, she makes this point: "[So far,] Trump has secured 37 per cent of the vote of the Republican primary electorate, or roughly 7.8 million votes out of approximately 21 million."

Sounds like a big deal? Allen begs to differ: "According to the US Census Bureau there were 142.2 million registered voters in the country in 2014. This means, that so far, Trump has secured the support of 6 per cent of the electorate. Yes, that's right, 6 per cent.

"Or perhaps it would be better to focus on the two-thirds of the electorate who actually vote. In that case, it should be acknowledged that Trump has secured, well, 8 per cent."

Noting how Trump's campaign staff work to clear any anti-Trump placards out of the TV shots at his rallies, Allen cuts to the chase: "The thesis is that a silent majority exists and that Trump will be its champion, decimating its foes. His strategy has been to secure votes by convincing people he already has them.

"If his thesis about a silent majority is wrong, his candidacy has no basis. Importantly, the numbers are telling us that the thesis is wrong."

'Enthusiasm' gap in Clinton support

The only thing going for Trump is that most of his opponents, in both parties, are no great shakes either. Both the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Trump's nearest Republican rival Ted Cruz are on the nose in favourable/unfavourable polling – and only the unlikely winners in both parties, Republican John Kasich and the Democrat Bernie Sanders score positively.

Such is Trump's "unfavourable" rating that some on the Democratic side are hoping that the urge to vote against him might help to bridge an awkward "enthusiasm" gap in support for Clinton.

The bigger the Democratic voter turnout on election day, the better is the outcome for the party's candidate, according to former US ambassador Howard Gutman. Writing in The Washington Post, he explains – if the total voter turnout in Virginia languishes at an unenthusiastic 2.2 million, the state votes Republican; if enthusiasm pushed the turn out to 3.6 million, "no Republican can win a majority".

"Some people like [Clinton] and many more tolerate her," Gutman says. "But virtually no one is enthusiastic about her – the enthusiasm gap presents a serious threat to her candidacy."

For Trump to achieve the previously unthinkable of becoming the GOP nominee will leave the party in a predicament of historic proportions, one which most in the party will not fully grasp till it confronts them.

Observing that major partisan realignments actually do happen in the US, on average about once every 40 years, Silver observes: "He'll have become the nominee despite neither being reliably conservative not being very electable, supposedly the two things Republicans care most about.

"He'll have done it with very little support from 'party elites ...' He'll have attacked the Republican Party's three previous candidates – Mitt Romney, John McCain and George W. Bush – without many consequences. If a Trump nomination happens, it'll imply that the Republican Party has been weakened and is perhaps even on the brink of failure, unable to co-ordinate on a plan to stop Trump despite the existential threat he poses to it."

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