Somebody in my Facebook Feed keeps liking to say that “Trump/Clinton are the two most unpopular candidates ever to run for president!” The classic way to measure favorability is to subtract favorability to unfavorability. Here’s how they rank.

Clinton: -11.6
Johnson: -12
Stein: -14.6
Trump: -19.8

Yes, Hillary Clinton is in fact the MOST popular candidate running for president right now, beating Gary Johnson by a nose!

Now critics might point out that this is because most of the public doesn’t know these two candidates. Gary Johnson has, for example, undecideds at 44.6%. And while one is tempted to say ‘all these people would love Johnson/Stein if the lamestream media would give him some air!’, I think it’s fair to say that that’s not the case. As a simple example, I ran a simple model where I pretended that all undecideds were forced to choose, and chose in the same proportions as the people who have already decided. This was not pretty for the third party candidates.

Clinton: -11.9
Trump: -20.5
Johnson: -21.9
Stein: -32.3

This may seem unfair, but frankly, it may be generous. Gary Johnson’s favorable/unfavorable ratings were pretty close to tied as recently as September 1st. In the last month, pretty much everyone who has decided to take a look at him has rejected him. If THAT trajectory continued for every undecided voter that took a look at Johnson, he’d end up with the popularity of the bubonic plague.
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Jill Stein’s rating has similarly been flat for favorables and growing for unfavorables, although not as extremely as Gary Johnson.
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Here’s Clinton and Trump for Completions sake
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