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<\/a><\/figure>\n\nAmong Clinton supporters, only her experience, at 32%, is mentioned as frequently as opposition to Trump. For Trump supporters, opposition to Clinton is among the most frequently cited factors for supporting their candidate, with nearly as many citing his status as a political outsider (27%) or his policy stances (26%).<\/p>\n\n
This “opposition as support” takes place in the context of an election campaign that is far more likely to be viewed in negative than positive terms: Majorities of Americans describe themselves as \u201cfrustrated\u201d and \u201cdisgusted\u201d with the campaign, while few declare themselves \u201cinterested\u201d, \u201coptimistic\u201d or \u201cexcited.\u201d And these negative takes have only become more widespread over the course of the summer.<\/p>\n\n
The survey conducted August 16-September 12 online and by mail among 4,538 adults, including 3,941 registered voters, provides a unique perspective on voters\u2019 feelings about the presidential candidates. Many voters have unqualified praise for their preferred candidate. A 78-year-old woman supporting Clinton describes her as \u201ca seasoned veteran\u201d who \u201ccan get things done,\u201d and adds: \u201cWe need a woman!\u201d<\/p>\n\n
A 43-year-old man who backs Trump says the main reason is that \u201che\u2019s not a career politician, and he doesn\u2019t owe politicians anything. He\u2019s got real-world experience that most career politicians lack.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Yet sizable shares in both camps focus at least partly \u2013 or in many cases exclusively \u2013 on the flaws or shortcomings of the opposing candidate. Several voters, including a 41-year-old woman who is supporting Clinton, describe their choice as \u201cthe lesser of two evils.\u201d A 49-year-old man who backs Trump says: \u201cAs bad as he is, I think Hillary is worse for our country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Clinton and Trump supporters also were asked about concerns they have, if any, about their own candidate. Roughly six-in-ten Trump supporters (62%) and half of Clinton supporters (50%) offer a concern about the candidate they support (the remainder assert that they have no concerns or do not give an answer).<\/p>\n\n For Trump supporters, the candidate\u2019s character and personality is mentioned far more frequently than any other concern. Four-in-ten registered voters who support Trump point to his personality as their main concern \u2013 with 34% specifically referring to his temperament or speaking style.<\/p>\n\n Some Trump supporters express blunt criticisms of their candidate. One 65-year-old woman describes him as a \u201ctemperamental child saying anything in an attempt to get what he wants.\u201d A 40-year-old woman points to Trump\u2019s \u201ctemper\u201d as a concern, but adds that she likes \u201chis honesty and hard-line beliefs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n Fewer Clinton supporters (18%) cite her character and personality as a concern, but most of those who do (17% of Clinton supporters overall) specifically refer to concerns about honesty or secrecy. An additional 16% cite Clinton\u2019s past or some of her associations, such as her ties to Wall Street, her husband\u2019s administration, the Clinton Foundation or actions associated with her time as Secretary of State (including her use of a private email server).<\/p>\n\n [She]<\/p>\n\n\n The new survey also finds that, no matter who wins on Nov. 8, few voters anticipate feeling excited about the outcome. Just 11% of all registered voters say they would be excited if Trump won, 26% say they would be relieved, while a majority says they would be disappointed (34%) or angry (25%).<\/p>\n\n Just 12% overall would be excited if Clinton wins, while 36% would be relieved; nearly half would be disappointed (29%) or angry (20%).<\/p>\n\n Far more Clinton and Trump supporters say they would feel relieved than excited if their candidate wins. Just a quarter of Clinton supporters (25%) and a similar share of Trump backers (28%) say they would be excited if their candidate were to win.<\/p>\n\n As previous Pew Research Center surveys<\/a> have found, voters have very negative feelings about the presidential campaign. Far more say they have been feeling frustrated (57%), disgusted (55%) or scared (43%) than say they are interested (31%), optimistic (15%) or excited (just 10%). Yet only 9% of voters say they feel indifferent about the campaign. Trump and Clinton supporters express similar levels of frustration (55% and 53%, respectively) and differ little in their feelings of disgust (53% vs. 48%) or fear (46% vs. 41%).<\/p>\n\n Negative feelings about the campaign rose over the summer. The share of voters saying they\u2019ve been feeling frustrated has risen 8 percentage points since earlier in the summer (from 49% to 57%). Similarly, a larger share now say they are disgusted (45% then, 55% now), while slightly more now say they are scared than said this two months ago (37% then, 43% now). There has been little change in the share expressing positive feelings about the campaign over the course of the summer.<\/p>\n\n Voters offer thoughtful comments about why they support their candidate for president. Below are some illustrative examples of the more than 3,100 comments from voters in the nationally representative, randomly selected, American Trends Panel.<\/p>\n\n Many backers of Trump and Clinton offer concerns they have about the candidate that they plan to vote for in November (though some supporters also take this opportunity to offer full-throated endorsements). Below is a sampling of voters concerns about their own candidates.<\/p>\n\n When presented with a list of factors that might influence their vote choice, dislike of the opposition again ranks high for both Trump and Clinton supporters as a major reason for backing their candidate: Roughly two-thirds of voters who favor Donald Trump (67%) and Hillary Clinton (64%) say this.<\/p>\n\n Among Trump supporters, only the candidate\u2019s views on terrorism (78%) and the economy (76%) rank higher than dislike of Clinton on a list of major reasons for supporting him.<\/p>\n\n And among Clinton supporters, only her experience in government (79%) ranks higher than dislike of Trump, though roughly as many of her backers cite her leadership ability (67%) as a major reason underlying their support.<\/p>\n\n Clinton supporters are 30 percentage points less likely than Trump supporters to cite their candidate\u2019s views on terrorism as a major reason for supporting them (48% vs. 78%). By contrast, nearly twice as many Clinton supporters (55%) as Trump supporters (28%) cite their candidate\u2019s views on race relations as a major reason for support.<\/p>\n\n While a sizable majority of Clinton supporters (79%) cite her experience as a major reason for why they back the former Secretary of State, nearly half of Trump supporters (47%) say his lack of prior government experience as a major reason they are voting for him.<\/p>\n\n A greater share of Clinton backers than Trump supporters say loyalty to the party\u2019s nominee is a major reason for their support: 43% of Clinton voters say they support her because she\u2019s the Democratic Party\u2019s nominee, but just 28% of Trump supporters say a major reason they back him is because he\u2019s the Republican Party\u2019s nominee. Neither side has many voters who say the candidates\u2019 personalities are a major reason for their support (18% of Trump; 32% of Clinton).<\/p>\n\n The historic nature of Clinton\u2019s candidacy is not a major reason for her supporters to vote for her this fall. About three-in-ten (29%) say Clinton\u2019s potential to become the first woman to win the White House is a major reason they support her. About four-in-ten Clinton supporters (41%) say her gender is not a reason at all for their support of her.<\/p>\n\n <\/p>\n\n The American Trends Panel (ATP), created by the Pew Research Center, is a nationally representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults living in households. Respondents who self-identify as internet users and who provided an email address participate in the panel via monthly self-administered Web surveys, and those who do not use the internet or decline to provide an email address participate via the mail. The panel is being managed by Abt SRBI.<\/p>\n\n The analysis in this report is based on 4,538 respondents, including 3,941 registered voters, who participated in the August 16-September 12, 2016 wave of the panel (4,195 by Web and 343 by mail). The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 4,538 respondents is plus or minus 2.4 percentage points and the margin of sampling error among registered voters is plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.<\/p>\n\n Members of the American Trends Panel were recruited from two large, national landline and cellphone random-digit-dial (RDD) surveys conducted in English and Spanish. At the end of each survey, respondents were invited to join the panel. The first group of panelists was recruited from the 2014 Political Polarization and Typology Survey, conducted January 23rd to March 16th, 2014. Of the 10,013 adults interviewed, 9,809 were invited to take part in the panel and a total of 5,338 agreed to participate.[1. When data collection for the 2014 Political Polarization and Typology Survey began, non-internet users were subsampled at a rate of 25%, but a decision was made shortly thereafter to invite all non-internet users to join. In total, 83% of non-internet users were invited to join the panel.] The second group of panelists was recruited from the 2015 Survey on Government, conducted August 27th to October 4th, 2015. Of the 6,004 adults interviewed, all were invited to join the panel, and 2,976 agreed to participate.[2. Respondents to the 2014 Political Polarization and Typology Survey who indicated that they are internet users but refused to provide an email address were initially permitted to participate in the American Trends Panel by mail, but were no longer permitted to join the panel after February 6, 2014. Internet users from the 2015 Survey on Government who refused to provide an email address were not permitted to join the panel.]<\/p>\n\n Participating panelists provided either a mailing address or an email address to which a welcome packet, a monetary incentive and future survey invitations could be sent. Panelists also receive a small monetary incentive after participating in each wave of the survey.<\/p>\n\n The Web component of the August 16-September 12, 2016 wave had a response rate of 81% (4,195 responses among 5,150 Web-based individuals in the panel); the mail component had a response rate of 76% (343 responses among 454 non-Web individuals in the panel). Taking account of the combined, weighted response rate for the recruitment surveys (10.0%) and attrition from panel members who were removed at their request or for inactivity, the cumulative response rate for the August 16-September 12, 2016 ATP wave is 2.9%.[3. Approximately once per year, panelists who have not participated in multiple consecutive waves are removed from the panel. These cases are counted in the denominator of cumulative response rates.]<\/p>\n\n The ATP data were weighted in a multi-step process that begins with a base weight incorporating the respondents\u2019 original survey selection probability and the fact that in 2014 some panelists were subsampled for invitation to the panel. Next, an adjustment was made for the fact that the propensity to join the panel and remain an active panelist varied across different groups in the sample. The final step in the weighting uses an iterative technique that matches gender, age, education, race, Hispanic origin and region to parameters from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2014 American Community Survey. Population density is weighted to match the 2010 U.S. Decennial Census. Telephone service is weighted to estimates of telephone coverage for 2016 that were projected from the July-December 2015 National Health Interview Survey. Volunteerism is weighted to match the 2013 Current Population Survey Volunteer Supplement. It also adjusts for party affiliation using an average of the three most recent Pew Research Center general public telephone surveys. Internet access is adjusted using a measure from the 2015 Survey on Government. Frequency of internet use is weighted to an estimate of daily internet use projected to 2016 from the 2013 Current Population Survey Computer and Internet Use Supplement. Sampling errors and statistical tests of significance take into account the effect of weighting. Interviews are conducted in both English and Spanish, but the Hispanic sample in the American Trends Panel is predominantly native born and English speaking.<\/p>\n\n The following table shows the unweighted sample sizes and the error attributable to sampling that would be expected at the 95% level of confidence for different groups in the survey:<\/p>\n\n Sample sizes and sampling errors for other subgroups are available upon request.<\/p>\n\n In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.<\/p>\n\n Pew Research Center undertakes all polling activity, including calls to mobile telephone numbers, in compliance with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and other applicable laws.<\/p>\n\n Pew Research Center is a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization and a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts, its primary funder.<\/p>\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2016\/09\/Campaign_2.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2016\/09\/Campaign_3.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2016\/09\/Campaign_4.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\nExplaining their vote: Enthusiasm mixes with dislike of opponent<\/h3>\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2016\/09\/Campaign_5.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\nThe concerns of supporters<\/h3>\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2016\/09\/Campaign_6.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\nExperience and leadership are major reasons supporters back Clinton<\/h3>\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2016\/09\/Campaign_7.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n<\/a>Methodology<\/h2>\n\n
Survey conducted August 16-September 12, 2016<\/h4>\n\n
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