Americans increasingly see Donald Trump as a serious presidential candidate, but they still don't like him very much, a new HuffPost/YouGov poll shows.
Trump's continued strength in national primary polls has earned him endless cable news coverage and caused no small amount of consternation from establishment figures who'd rather see someone less controversial take the lead.
His image among the nation as a whole, though, has worsened slightly since he began his campaign.
Those polled are about evenly split on whether Trump is a serious candidate -- a significant change from July, when just a fifth thought he was. But half of Americans now say they disagree with his political positions, up 7 percentage points since July, and 57 percent hold an unfavorable view of him personally.
HuffPost Pollster's aggregate of all publicly available surveys gives him an average net favorability rating of -22, making him less popular than any 2016 candidate save for former Florida Gov Jeb Bush (R), former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) or Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
That trio suffers from a lack of support among Republicans, a problem Trump doesn't share.
Fifty-seven percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters in the HuffPost/YouGov poll say they'd be satisfied or enthusiastic to have Trump as their nominee, up 5 points since July. Three-quarters agree with Trump's political positions, and 58 percent say they have a favorable view of him personally.
Seventy-one percent of Americans, including 62 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters, say the media pay too much attention to Donald Trump. (Sorry, guys.) Just 3 percent of the public doesn't think Trump is getting his fair due in the press.
The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted Dec. 10-11 among U.S. adults, using a sample selected from YouGov's opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population.
The Huffington Post has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls. You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov's nationally representative opinion polling. Data from all HuffPost/YouGov polls can be found here. More details on the polls' methodology are available here.
Most surveys report a margin of error that represents some, but not all, potential survey errors. YouGov's reports include a model-based margin of error, which rests on a specific set of statistical assumptions about the selected sample, rather than the standard methodology for random probability sampling. If these assumptions are wrong, the model-based margin of error may also be inaccurate. Click here for a more detailed explanation of the model-based margin of error.
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