Voters In New Hampshire And Iowa Have A Negative Opinion Of Every 2016 Candidate Except One

Voters in Iowa and New Hampshire don’t much like their options in the primary-election races for U.S. president in 2016. That doesn’t bode well for the crowded field of candidates who have been attempting to woo voters in the country’s two earliest voting states for months now. Among 17 declared Republican and five declared Democratic candidates for president, the only one with an overall positive favorability rating is U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind.-Vt.

NBC News/Marist Poll results in Iowa and New Hampshire released Sunday and seen by International Business Times show all the other candidates from Jim Webb and Ted Cruz to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton -- especially Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton -- with overall negative favorability ratings. That means there are more voters with negative opinions than there are voters with positive opinions about every candidate, except Sanders.

Here are the favorable/unfavorable scores of half a dozen presidential candidates among all registered voters in Iowa:

• Bernie Sanders +3 (30 percent/27 percent)

• Marco Rubio -1 (31 percent/32 percent)

• Scott Walker -1 (30 percent/31 percent)

• Jeb Bush -12 (34 percent/46 percent)

• Hillary Clinton -19 (37/56 percent)

• Donald Trump -28 (32 percent/60 percent)

Notably, the NBC News/Marist Poll points out that Clinton’s favorable/unfavorable score in Iowa among all registered voters mirrors the numbers found by a recent Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll conducted there.

Here are the favorable/unfavorable scores of half a dozen presidential candidates among all registered voters in New Hampshire:

• Sanders +12 (41 percent/29 percent)

• Bush -5 (40 percent/45 percent)

• Walker -6 (28 percent/34 percent)

• Rubio -6 (28 percent/34 percent)

• Clinton -20 (37 percent/57 percent)

• Trump -40 (27 percent/67 percent)

The news gets a bit better for Clinton and Sanders when it comes to Democratic voters exclusively. Among them, Clinton’s favorable/unfavorable rating is +54 (74 percent/20 percent) in Iowa and +48 (71 percent/23 percent) in New Hampshire. Sanders’ comparable rating is +39 (54 percent/15 percent) in the Hawkeye State and +51 (65 percent/14 percent) in the Granite State.

Despite leading their respective parties in the polls, Clinton and Trump also attracted the highest unfavorability ratings by far in the two states. Even among Republican voters, Trump, the real-estate mogul and reality-television personality, has a favorable/unfavorable rating in New Hampshire of -14 (39 percent/53 percent) and a rating in Iowa of +1 (45 percent/44 percent).

With varying margins of error, the polls were conducted July 14-21, meaning voters were asked their opinion before and after Trump’s controversial comments about U.S. Sen. John McCain’s war record July 18. Those remarks did not affect Trump in Iowa (he was at 16 percent before the comments and 18 percent after), but they did hurt him in New Hampshire (26 percent before, 14 percent after).