Presidential candidates nobody wants?

In a nationally representative study, we explore the public's views of the 2016 presidential nominees. Current measures generally focus on approval of given candidates with closed‐ended questions, but much can be learned by soliciting the public's unconstrained candidate preferences—not only in the direction of how they feel, but the depth of their views and who they really want to see in office. Employing open‐ended questions, we find that more than 75% of the voting public preferred an option other than what was offered. Even when constraining choices to politicians, the Democratic and Republican nominees were not preferred by the majority of the public, and this held true when restricting the analyses to partisans only. We further asked voters to express, in their own words, what they thought of the two candidates for president. The majority of the public described both candidates in negative terms. They spoke with deep disdain for the opposition's candidate, as well as their own party's candidate. The results add support to the view that US primary elections are failing to produce candidates who represent the public's interests and signal the potential for further instability in US government.