The more Americans get to know 2016 candidates, the less they like them—especially Trump


For 2016 candidates, increased name recognition is key to victory — most voters won't pull the lever for a name they've never seen before — but for some contenders, "getting to know you" means "getting to hate you."
A new Gallup poll finds that the candidates with greatest name recognition, namely Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie, also snag the highest unfavorable ratings nationwide:
The two candidates apparently bucking this correlation are Democrat Bernie Sanders and Republican Ben Carson. Both maintain positive favorability ratings despite significant jumps in their name recognition over the past few months.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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