Every presidential election is different, but nobody’s going to tell us that this one isn’t notably different from any other in the modern period.
It’s not just that the two major-party candidates are so disliked and unpopular with much of the public. While Donald Trump’s numbers are no better and sometimes worse, Hillary Clinton’s unfavorables are about as bad as we’ve ever seen for a frontrunner, with about three in five voters saying she’s not honest and trustworthy, a product of the stories about the Clinton Foundation, her private emails, and decades-long controversies involving Clinton and her husband, the former president. …
Nonetheless, the defining difference in this election is not Clinton but Trump. Forget Wendell Willkie: There has never been a presidential nominee like him. He has divided the Republican Party — separating party elites from much of the party’s populist base — and he has rearranged the electorate in ways we haven’t ever seen, at least to this extent. CONT.
Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik & Geoffrey Skelley, Sabato’s Crystal Ball
