WASHINGTON: Donald Trump may have a difficult but not improbable route to the Republican presidential nomination.
When it comes to ultimate victory in November’s general election, however, the real estate tycoon faces a far more forbidding path.
He still needs to repel the late revolt by rival Ted Cruz as the two gallop toward the campaign season’s final primary races along with third-placed John Kasich.
But the nightmare scenario for Republicans is inching closer toward reality: a candidate who wins the nomination, but whose unfavorability rating is so sky high that he loses in an Election Day landslide, perhaps even throwing the Republican control of Congress into jeopardy.
Poll after poll shows it would be prohibitively tough for Trump — a political novice who has capitalized on voter disgust with Washington — to convert a possible nomination victory into a viable head-to-head campaign against the likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who also faces high unfavorable numbers.
Of the 57 Clinton-Trump matchup polls in the RealClearPolitics database dating back to last May, only five show Trump ahead. Clinton averages a 10.8 percentage point lead nationwide.
