Party crashers: upstart candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are shaking up the 2016 presidential election.

• Author: Smith, Patricia
• Position: NATIONAL

One is a billionaire real estate I developer and TV star from New York with a flair for insulting people. The other is an often grumpy U.S. senator from Vermont who calls himself a socialist. They have little in common except this: They've both surprisingly surged in the polls in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Donald Trump, famous for his luxury hotels and for firing people on The Apprentice, has been leading a pack of 16 Republican candidates that includes seasoned politicians like former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

On the Democratic side, Senator Bernie Sanders, who until recently was little known nationally, is leading former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in some polls in early voting states.

Though Trump and Sanders are on opposite sides of the political spectrum-Trump is conservative and Sanders is so liberal that he doesn't even refer to himself as a Democrat*--they are both benefiting from serious voter discontent.

According to a recent CNN/ORC poll, only 3 in 10 Americans believe that their views are represented in Washington. Confidence in institutions like schools, banks, and churches is at near historic lows, according to Gallup. And in a July New York Times/CBS News poll, only 27 percent of Americans said the nation is on the right track.

Many Americans also complain that politics has become too scripted, with carefully constructed sound bites for cable news and social media. The unrehearsed quality that both Trump and Sanders have brought to the campaign is seen as a breath of fresh air by some voters.

Trump seems to say whatever pops into his head, picking fights with journalists and referring to Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists. Sanders talks of starting a revolution against the political establishment and the rich, and he snaps at reporters who ask questions he considers frivolous.

"They are both blunt and forthright; they do not appear as practiced and smooth as other candidates," says Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. "Americans traditionally have always loved candidates who are 'unbought and unbossed,' as the saying goes."

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