Reuters/Ipsos Radically Changes Methodology to Favor Clinton

The Reuters/Ipsos polling team announced Friday that they are dropping the “Neither” option from their presidential preference polls after their tracking polls showed a 17-point swing in favor of the Republican nominee Donald J. Trump, exposing the “Secret Trump Voters” Democrats fear.

“In a presidential campaign notable for its negativity, the option of ‘Neither’ candidate appears to be an appealing alternative, at least to participants in the Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll,” wrote Maurice Tamman, the leader of the Reuters news service’s New York City-based data mining and investigative reporting team. “Many voters on both sides have been ambivalent in their support for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump, complicating the task of the pollsters trying to track the race.”

Breitbart News noted the 17-point swing for Trump, which seems to have set off alarm bells at Reuters.

Mamman wrote that in the “Year of Neither,” the swing came from an underreporting of Trump support before the Republican National Convention held in Cleveland July 18 to July 21.

Reuters has a reputation for accurate polling, so it is significant that Mamman made this decision as the presidential campaign enters its last 100 days with both conventions adjourned.

“In the nearly five years Reuters/Ipsos has been offering the ‘Neither/Other’ option to respondents in presidential polling, it has never yielded such a skew,” he wrote. “The results highlight how poll designs and methodologies can yield significantly differing results, and how important differences can emerge from the way a question is framed.”

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