Majority of Americans can't fathom supporting Trump or Clinton (or Cruz)

Dylan Stableford
·Senior Writer
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Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Ted Cruz. (Photos: John Minchillo/AP; Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx/AP; Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

They may be the frontrunners, but a majority of Americans can’t see themselves supporting either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Nor, for that matter, could they fathom supporting Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

According to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal national poll, 68 percent of registered voters say they couldn’t see themselves supporting Trump, while 58 percent say the same about Clinton. Sixty-one percent of voters surveyed said they couldn’t see themselves backing Cruz.

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Bernie Sanders and John Kasich fared slightly better, with a minority of voters saying they couldn’t see themselves supporting either the Vermont senator (48 percent) or the Ohio governor (47 percent).

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What’s more, 65 percent of all voters hold a negative view of Trump — making him “the most unpopular major presidential candidate in the history” of the NBC/WSJ poll. A majority of voters (56 percent) have an unfavorable view of Clinton — a figure that has risen five points in the last month — while 49 percent view Cruz the same way.

In terms of favorability, Sanders and Kasich scored net-positive favorability ratings, the NBC/WSJ poll found. Sanders is also the only candidate who more voters could see themselves supporting than could not.

“To top it off,” NBC senior political editor Mark Murray noted, “just 19 percent of all respondents give Clinton high marks for being honest and trustworthy, while only 12 percent give Trump high scores for having the right temperament.”

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Nonetheless, a majority of likely voters in both parties say they’d be satisfied with them as their nominees.

Among Democrats, 73 percent say they’d be either very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with Clinton as the nominee, while 63 percent of Republicans said the same about Trump.

Still, more GOP voters say they’d be satisfied with Cruz (66 percent) than with Trump.

New York Rep. Peter King is not one of them.

“I hate Ted Cruz,” King said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday. “I think I’ll take cyanide if he got the nomination.”