A Reuters/Ipsos poll released today found that only 45 percent of Democrats say they support Hillary, a nearly 15-point drop since last month. And yet, for some reason, Reuters seems to be downplaying the news contained in its own poll.
When the leading candidate loses 15 percent of her support, that’s significant. So how does Reuters convey the big news? They start by not mentioning it in the headline. Instead of highlighting Hillary’s collapse, Reuters goes with, “Many Democrats want independent Clinton email probe.” That is a result contained in the pol,l but it’s clearly not the big news here. If anything, it’s likely the cause of the actual news.
Reuters does know what that big news is here. Despite not using it in the headline, the story itself opens, “Democrats’ support is softening for Hillary Clinton, their party’s presumed 2016 presidential front-runner…” which brings us to the other problem with this story. Softening? If we were looking at a 4-5 points dip in a month, that might be called “softening.” A 15-point drop is bailing out.
Put another way, Hillary has lost about a quarter of her total support among Democrats since mid-February. In fact, the last day of Reuters’ 5-day polling average, March 17th, appears to be the worst result for Hillary in two years. There’s another possible headline that Reuters chose not to go with.
Well, maybe, this is just the kind of soft sell Reuters always uses. No, that’s not the case. Here’s a comparable story about another candidate from a few years ago.
New polling by Reuters/Ipsos indicates that during the past two weeks – since just after the Democratic National Convention – support for Romney among Americans age 60 and older has crumbled, from a 20-point lead over Democratic President Barack Obama to less than 4 points.
When Romney lost 16 points among a subset of voters, Reuters said his support “crumbled.” Hillary loses 15 points among all Democrats and her support is “softening.” Funny how that works.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.