One in Four Voters Are Double-Haters, Rejecting Trump and Biden
(Bloomberg) -- The ranks of the double-haters — voters who say they don’t like either major party presidential candidate — are at a historic high and make up one-quarter of the electorate, according to a new analysis from Pew Research Center.
Most Read from Bloomberg
Flesh-Eating Bacteria That Can Kill in Two Days Spreads in Japan
How the US Mopped Up a Third of Global Capital Flows Since Covid
These Are the World’s Most Expensive Cities for Expats in 2024
Ukraine Bid for Global South Support Falters at Swiss Summit
Safeguards Against Le Pen’s Far-Right Are Starting to Unravel
That’s nearly twice as many as at this point in 2020.
Double-haters were a key factor in Donald Trump’s upset win in 2016, when they broke for the Republican candidate over Democrat Hillary Clinton. But President Joe Biden won many of those voters over on his way to winning the White House in 2020.
Biden and Trump are taking roughly equal measures of these disillusioned voters in battleground states, with Biden winning 25% to Trump’s 22%, a May Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll shows.
But the biggest threat to Biden and Trump is that voters turned off by them will simply stay home — or find refuge in an independent candidate like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is polling at 24% among those voters in the Bloomberg/Morning Consult survey. Other third-party candidates are taking a combined 12%.
Growing political polarization is driving the unpopularity. The Pew analysis found that presidential candidates are only slightly less popular within their own party than they were three decades ago, but that voters of the opposing party are much more negative.
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek
Google DeepMind Shifts From Research Lab to AI Product Factory
Trump’s Planned Tariffs Would Tax US Households, Economists Warn
Grieving Families Blame Panera’s Charged Lemonade for Leaving a Deadly Legacy
It Will Take More Than US Bargaining Power to Cut Drug Costs
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.