Most Americans think a Donald Trump presidency would be bad for the country, a new HuffPost/YouGov survey finds.
A majority, 53 percent, say that electing the Republican nominee will hurt the U.S. as a whole, while 30 percent say it will help and 17 percent say it won’t make much of a difference or are unsure.
Meanwhile, 44 percent think electing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton will hurt the U.S. as a whole, 29 percent think it will help and 28 percent think it won’t make much of a difference or don’t know what effect it will have.
Less than one-third of Americans expect either presidential candidate to help them, their families or people like them. Just 28 percent think Clinton will help people like them, while 25 percent say she’ll help them and their family. For Trump, those numbers are a similar 29 percent and 25 percent, respectively.
Underlying the results is a deep partisan split. Members of both parties think their nominees will do direct good, but they’re even more convinced that their opponent will do serious harm.
Fifty-nine percent of Democrats think Clinton will help both the U.S. as a whole and people like them, but an even greater majority ― 89 percent ― expect Trump to hurt the country, and 81 percent think he’ll hurt people like them. Fifty-three percent think that a Clinton presidency will personally help them and their family, while 77 percent expect that a Trump presidency will be personally detrimental to them.
Across the aisle, 63 percent of Republicans expect Trump to help the country as a whole if elected, while 82 percent say Clinton will hurt it. Sixty-five percent expect Trump to help people like them, and 55 percent believe he will help their families. Meanwhile, 81 percent think Clinton will hurt people like them, and 72 percent believe her presidency will have a direct, negative impact on them and their families.
The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted Oct. 27-31 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.