Donald Trump has lost the unpopularity contest — to former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
Jim Mone/AP
Donald Trump has been polled as the least favorable presidential candidate in modern history by an ABC News/Washington Post poll.
The bombastic GOP front-runner was already polled as the least popular top-tier presidential candidate in modern history, but now a new poll says Duke, who tanked in the 1992 presidential election, beat him by a hair.
Two in three American voters, or 67%, said they viewed Trump unfavorably in the latest ABC News/ Washington Post poll, compared with 69% who had an unfavorable impression of Duke in the same poll taken in 1992.
The KKK grand wizard — who did a three-year stint in the Louisiana Legislature — won fewer than 120,000 votes and not a single delegate during his 1992 bid for the GOP presidential nomination.
Trump is linked to the white nationalist by more than their high unfavorability ratings — in February, Duke made racially charged remarks on his radio show when he said that voting for anyone other than Trump would be “treason to your heritage” and encouraged his listeners to volunteer for the real estate magnate's campaign.
Burt Steel/AP
Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke said on his radio show that voting for anyone other than Trump would be "treason to your heritage."
Trump fumbled his denouncement of Duke’s quasi-endorsement when he failed to say whether he’d distance himself from him during a February CNN interviewwhen he claimed he “didn’t know anything about him” or the KKK, despite having mentioned Duke in previous interviews.
The billionaire businessman later blamed a bad earpiecefor his refusal to say whether he disavowed Duke's support.
The other two Republican nominee hopefuls, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, didn’t fare well in the new ABC News/Washington Post poll either.
Cruz, who is trailing Trump in both delegates and unpopularity, reached his highest unfavorability rating yet this election cycle at 53%.
Kasich is the most liked GOP candidate with 39% of surveyed American voters viewing him unfavorably.