Less they seem to like

Poll: Trump least-liked candidate

By Nick Gass

The more Americans know a presidential candidate, the less they seem to like him or her, none more so than Donald Trump, according to the results of Gallup's U.S. Daily survey from the last two weeks released on Thursday.

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton led all candidates with 94 percent of those saying they had an opinion of her, though her overall net favorability stood at negative-four points (45 percent to 49 percent). In the case of Trump, 91 percent had an opinion of the Republican poll leader; but his net favorability rating was by far the most negative of any candidate in either party. Just 32 percent said they had a favorable view of Trump, compared with 59 percent who had an unfavorable one, a net-negative favorability of -27 points, 13 points lower than that of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, with whom 78 percent of respondents were familiar.

The top four presidential candidates in terms of recognition — Clinton, Trump, Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — are also the bottom four in terms of negative favorability ratings.

Compared with an analogous July tracking survey from Gallup, Christie enjoyed the largest increase in overall popularity, however. Five months ago, the governor's net rating stood at -9 points, while it has ticked upward to -5 points by early December. Bush, meanwhile, experienced the biggest decrease in favorability, going from a net -3 points to -14 over the same period.

In terms of overall recognition, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson led the field with a 30-point increase in familiarity over the last five months, jumping from 30 percent to 66 percent. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders had the second-largest bump, going from 44 percent to 66 percent. Carson also had the largest net positive favorability rating of +6 points (30 percent unfavorable to 36 percent), followed closely by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio at +5 points (28 percent to 33 percent).

Gallup gathered the results as part of its rolling U.S. daily survey taken from Nov. 23-Dec. 7, polling a random sample of 6,603 adults via landlines and cellphones, with individual respondent pools ranging between 1,800 and 1,950 adults. The margin of error for samples in which respondents rated each candidate is plus or minus 2 percentage points.