Fact Check Team: Record high 25% of Americans dislike both Biden and Trump

WASHINGTON (TND) — The 2024 presidential election has the least-liked majority party candidates in decades.

A recent survey from the Pew Research Center found that 25% of Americans have unfavorable views of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. It's the highest share since at least 1988. Just three percent of Americans have favorable views of both Biden and Trump. The survey was conducted before Trump's conviction in the New York hush-money case.

Back in 2020, 13% of Americans had unfavorable views of both Biden and Trump; the number has nearly doubled in four years.

During this same time in the 2016 presidential election, 20% of Americans had unfavorable views of Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In 1988, just 5% of Americans had an unfavorable view of the Democratic presidential candidate, Michael Dukakis, and then former Republican presidential candidate, George H.W. Bush.

Favorability

FiveThirtyEight shows Trump is 0.9% ahead of Biden in the national polls. Trump has 41%, Biden has 40.1%, and third-party candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has 9.2%.Pew also found Trump has a higher favorability than Biden. The data shows that 39% of Americans view Trump favorably. Meanwhile, 37% of Americans view Biden favorably.

The current favorability ratings are low and have been since 2016.

In every election from 1988-2012, at least one candidate had a favorable rating of at least 50% at around this time in the election cycle, according to Pew.

The partisan divide has grown over the years.

Currently, 8% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents have a favorable view of Trump. The numbers are even lower for Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents, just 6% of this group have a favorable view of Biden.

Meanwhile, in 2008, 27% of Democrats had a favorable view of then-Republican presidential candidate, John McCain. The numbers were identical for then-Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama, with 27% of Republicans having a favorable view of him.