Trivia question for the day: What do root canals, traffic jams, hipsters, lice and the Canadian rockers Nickelback have in common?
Three guesses... but you'll never get it. Give up? All of these things, according to a new poll, are more popular than Donald Trump.
The new numbers come from Public Policy Polling center (PPP) which, while non-partisan, occasionally does some rather offbeat polling. Like the time it researched God's approval rating.
The genesis of its latest survey focused on the seeming inevitability of a Hillary Clinton - Donald Trump matchup. The PPP did a national survey of over 1,000 registered voters in the first few days of May.
What they found was surprising, disappointing and in some cases, disturbing.
Getting Behind Your Candidate
Most surprisingly, they found that 78 percent of rank and file Republicans surveyed are okay with Trump being the GOP candidate. That number is almost the same as the 75 percent of Democrats who are lining up behind Clinton.
Clinton is still the clear favorite in a head-to-head matchup: she leads Trump 47 to 41 percent among registered voters.
“Hillary Clinton certainly is favored to win the Presidential race this fall,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “But it might not be the giant
blowout it’s been made out to be in some quarters."
The PPP also wanted to get a feel for the average Trump supporter. So they asked about a number of false statements that Trump has made and they found that many of his supporters tend to fall into what we might call conspiracy theorists.
For instance, 65 percent of Trump supporters believe President Obama is a Muslim.
A majority of Trump supporters - 59 percent - are so-called 'birthers' in that they believe the President was born outside of the United States.
And nearly 15 percent believe Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered.
But a number that is likely to be giving GOP operatives fits is this one: The survey asked "If a candidate for the Senate in your state supported Donald Trump for president, would that make you more or less likely to vote for that Senator?" Nearly half said it would make them less likely to vote for that candidate.
That raises the possibility Trump might be stumping for president alone, because other candidates are afraid his 'unfavorables' will rub off on their candidacy.
And that's the other headline of the poll: A lot of people just don't like Donald Trump.
Almost two-thirds, 61 percent of all voters, have an unfavorable opinion of the presumptive Republican nominee.
But the poll also found Hillary Clinton isn't doing much better. Her unfavorables are hovering around 55 percent.
On the plus side, voters do like 'The Donald' more than hemorrhoids and cockroaches.
