News Analysis: For many Americans, 2016 presidential election is choice between 'lesser of 2 evils'

With both two candidates strongly disliked by people outside their bases, many Americans are seeing the 2016 U.S. presidential race as a choice between "the lesser of two evils."

The race has up until recent days been neck in neck, with Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton getting a post-convention bounce in the polls that has put her nearly 7 points ahead of Republican nominee Donald Trump in Friday's Real Clear Politics average of polls.

But that doesn't mean people particularly like Clinton, as the candidate has been embroiled in scandals for her entire three-decade political career, and a fresh spate of controversy over the use of a private email account while she was secretary of state continues to dog her.

Rather, analysts surmise that many voters may be supporting Clinton not because they believe she'd be a good president, but rather because they feel Trump would be a disaster.

"Each candidate has clear negatives. Clinton is viewed as untrustworthy, while Trump's temperament is not seen as suitable for the presidency," Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies of the Brookings Institution, told Xinhua.

"But right now, Clinton is winning the polling. Voters see Trump's deficiencies as much more fundamental than hers," West said.

Trump has made racist statements and contradicts himself all the time; He has been so erratic that voters worry about him having his finger on the nuclear button, he added.

Indeed, Trump's comments comparing Mexicans to rapists continue to haunt him, and many see his statements as racist and anti-immigrant in a country seeing a surge of immigration from countries worldwide.

Moreover, Trump has flip flopped on a number of issues, and has been slammed as making statements off the cuff that he believes to be true at the time but does not know for a fact whether they are true or not.

The lesser-of-two evils mentality among American voters is likely to spark a high voter turnout, as voters fret over the consequences of the other candidate clinching the White House and then wreaking havoc with the economy and national defense.

"There is likely to be a high voter turnout because people on all sides see the stakes as being quite high. When voters think their vote matters, they turn out to vote," West said.

Indeed, Gallup said in a report released earlier this week that many voters will focus on the unprecedented high level of unpopularity of both major party candidates. But rather than keep voters home, the negative tone may instead ignite a much higher turnout at the polls than anyone is expecting.

"We could see 10 million more voters go to the polls this year than in 2012, a prediction made, in part, based on turnout patterns in the past two open-seat contests, 2000 and 2008. In both instances, turnout was significantly higher than in the incumbent re-election year that preceded it," Gallup said in a report.

Past elections have also been seen as a lesser-of-two evils scenario, but this sense is stronger in this election than past ones.

"Many elections have had a 'lesser of the two evils' flavor to them. But what is unusual this year is the large number of voters who think the candidates are deficient on very fundamental dimensions," West said.

That could foreshadow at least four more years of the bitter partisan rivalry that has characterized Washington over the last two terms of Barack Obama's presidency.

"That creates a big problem in terms of the legitimacy of the winner. It will be hard for the winning candidate to unite the country behind him or herself," West said.

Source : XINHUA