We are constantly bombarded with headlines talking about presidential candidate Donald Trump as the frontrunner of the Grand Old Party, and we often ask “why?” and “what are people thinking?” and “when is he going to go away?” You know, causal questions. We all see the percentages, but how many people across the county really like Trump?

Only 33 percent, apparently.

According to the most recent two-week average from Gallup, 33 percent of Americans surveyed nationwide had a favorable view and 60 percent had an unfavorable view of the businessman, who has risen in the polls and garnered a hefty amount of media attention because of his fiery attitude and defiance of political norms and correctness.

In Gallup’s findings, Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport explains that Trump, “has a higher unfavorable rating than any nominated candidate from either of the two major parties going back to the 1992” (1992 was the first year Gallup recorded favorability percentages).

While Trump’s number seems a bit extreme, some of the other candidates aren’t too far behind.

Across all Americans, Hillary Clinton’s unfavorable rating is at 52 percent; Jeb Bush, 45 percent; Chris Christie, 38 percent; Ted Cruz, 37 percent; Marco Rubio, 33 percent; Bernie Sanders, 31 percent; and Ben Carson, 30 percent.

Check out a graph of some of the other ratings (modern and historical) below:

Data courtesy of Gallup.

This puts Trump’s net favorability in the negatives at -27 percent, and according to Gallup, is higher than Clinton and Bush’s net -10 percent favorability.

“The bottom line is that Trump now has a higher unfavorable rating than any candidate at any time during all of these previous election cycles,” said Newport. “That conclusion takes into account the fact that unfavorable ratings tend to rise in the heat of a general election campaign as the barbs, negative ads and heightened partisanship are taken to their highest levels.”

In the 1992 election, Bill Clinton’s highest unfavorable rating was 49 percent, while opponent George H.W. Bush’s unfavorable rating was higher and closest to Trump’s at 57 percent. In 2008, Barack Obama’s unfavorable rating ratings maxed at 37 percent and in 2012 raised to 48 percent.

The moral of the story is that if we blame Obama for everything now and he still had lower unfavorable ratings then, who knows what the world will become if a man like Trump becomes president. So, don’t believe everything you read about how much everyone likes Trump–it’s not technically true. 

Julia Bryant

Julia Bryant is an Editorial Senior Fellow at Law Street from Howard County, Maryland. She is a junior at the University of Maryland, College Park, pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Economics. You can contact Julia at JBryant@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Donald Trump is the Most Unfavorable Presidential Candidate In Recent Years appeared first on Law Street.

Anyone who has ever been to school or needed a simple explanation of a complicated subject, or just needed any information ever, can appreciate Wikipedia. It’s a great resource for background info. Don’t use it for your papers, kids, but feel free to use it for pretty much everything else. Most of the time Wikipedia can be trusted, as long as you’re using it as a resource and not a legitimate source. But every now and again, people mess with the entries to make them incorrect. Usually they’re corrected pretty quickly. If the edit was particularly bad, Wikipedia has the ability to track the IP address and figure out where the offending edit came from.

Here’s a concrete example: on the Orange is the New Black Wikipedia page, the Advocate, a well known LGBT publication, is quoted saying that OITNB “contains the first ever women-in-prison narrative to be played by a real transgender woman.” This sentence was referring to Laverne Cox. Well last week, there was a disturbing edit made to this entry — the phrase “transgender woman” was changed to “a real man pretending to be a woman.”

Not only is that fundamentally incorrect, it’s ridiculously insensitive, disgusting, and bigoted. So what asshole decided to make that edit?

Someone working in Congress, of course.

This has to be an isolated incident, right? There’s no way that Congressional staffers, funded by our tax dollars, sit around and edit Wikipedia pages, sometimes pretty offensively, instead of working to fix a Congress that has an approval rating that is languishing in the low teens.

Nope. That appears to be a lot of what they do — edits from Congressional IP addresses are pretty common. A Twitter bot called @congressedits collects all of them, and it’s had a kind of busy summer. Here are some of my favorites:

Tranny Wikipedia article edited anonymously from US House of Representatives http://t.co/SkIIKhDxBu

— congress-edits (@congressedits) August 20, 2014

Oh look another case where someone in Congress edited an article to do with transgender people…incorrectly and offensively! In case you were wondering, the edit was to change the phrase “assigned sex” to “biological sex.” That’s incorrect. Great job, random Congressional staffer, that was a worthy use of your tax-funded paycheck.

Chrisley Knows Best Wikipedia article edited anonymously from US House of Representatives http://t.co/39F07XgCoU

— congress-edits (@congressedits) August 19, 2014

This one is benign at least. It’s an edit on a Chrisley Knows Best Wikipedia page, an American TV show. Someone with a Congressional IP address thought it was essential that we know exactly what suburb of Atlanta is the setting for the show. Which is at least correct, I presume, but again, not a good use of time or money.

UFO sightings in Russia Wikipedia article edited anonymously from US House of Representatives http://t.co/IsWVBxNqVC

— congress-edits (@congressedits) August 4, 2014

Oh, look, here’s one where the article UFO Sightings in Russia was edited anonymously from a Congressional IP address. A particular incident where a UFO sighting was reported in Russia was added to the article. Why does someone who works in the Capitol Building have such an encyclopedic knowledge of UFO sightings in Russia? I’m not sure, but that seems healthy.

There’s also more edits than can be counted on members’ pages, bills, etc…many of which are incorrect, argumentative, or biased. Wikipedia administrators have blocked anonymous edits from Congressional IP addresses multiple times because of these issues. The IP address used to make the Laverne Cox edits, and many of the edits to do with transphobia, has been blocked three times this summer. While it’s probably the same incredibly immature staffer/intern, there’s no way to actually know.

So real talk, guys. I know that work can be kind of boring in Congress, especially during recess. But seriously, stop with the edits. Play 2048, or prank your coworkers, or take a nap, I don’t care! But this whole editing-Wikipedia thing looks really bad. Just stop.

—

Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Johann Dréo via Flickr]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Good News! Your Tax Dollars Go to Bad Wikipedia Edits appeared first on Law Street.